Prairie Travels - Nebraska, The Dakotas, and Wyoming

I love the Great Plains. I grew up on them in rural Elbert County, southeast of the Denver metro area where the ponderosa pines mark the transition between the Rocky Mountains and the prairie. Then I continued to live in them as a student in Laramie, Wyoming where I studied biology and environmental science. And then after graduation my first ecology related job was as a field technician in North Dakota, dragging for ticks, collecting mosquitos, and documenting plant diversity in the mixed grass prairies around Bismarck-Mandan and the Chase Lake Prairie Refuge.

People describe the beauty of the prairie and the plains as subtle, but I'm not sure I agree. Nothing feels as vast or open to me as a wide open grassland, especially at sunset when color explodes across the sky, unbroken by mountains, forest, or buildings.

So it felt right to mark a new phase in life with my girlfriend by road tripping through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. We first arrived in Nebraska at Chimney Rock, which is now managed as a state historical site. While there, we immediately noticed certain birds that may or may not live in our home state of Colorado, including a lark sparrow. We also heard familiar prairie birds like meadowlarks.

The big excitement at Chimney Rock was a heard of bighorn sheep. They were too far in the distance to get a really good look, and my phone has a terrible lens for zooming in, but they appeared to be all rams.

From Chimney Rock we travelled on to Rapid City, South Dakota and spent the next day exploring Badlands National Park. Badlands NP is an incredible place if you are interested in paleontology. At one point the area it now occupies was the ocean floor of the inland sea, followed by period where it was a hot and humid swampland, before eventually becoming grasslands. Prehistoric small horses, rhino-like animals, and other types of creatures also lived here.

In addition to more prairie wildflowers, we spotted prairie dogs, more bighorn sheep, and bison. The entire area seems to have gotten a lot of rain lately because the grass between the formations was extremely verdant. All across the park there was a lot of sweet clover, which is an invasive species that was introduced to the area by Europeans. Having that said, it was still beautiful, especially set against the tan, orange, and red of the Badland's formations.

From Badlands National Park, we journeyed to the Black Hills and camped in Custer State Park. It was late at night, and just when we entered the park we almost had a collision with a gigantic bison that was in the middle of the road. If I had thought of it, I would have tried to take a picture and make an iNaturalist observation out of the encounter, but it was more important to make it to the campsite in one piece.

In contrast to the landscapes of Chimney Rock and the Badlands, this area was heavily forested with ponderosa pines (very similar to where I grew up in Colorado), although much greener. I think the climate is slightly wetter in South Dakota's Black Hills than in Colorado. There were also a lot of oak trees, which we do not have as much of in Colorado, with the exception of scrub oak.

Wildlife sightings here included white-tailed deer, Canada geese, and various birds. Many of the wildflowers here were familiar to ones I had seen back at home, including iris and thermopsis.

Finally, we made it to North Dakota. Theodore Roosevelt National Park was our main destination for this leg of the journey and we saw by far the most wildlife here. Before we even got to the trail we had picked for our hike we saw a pronghorn, a herd of bison, prairie dogs, and several mustangs that were traversing the bluffs.

Once we set out on our hike we realized that the North Dakota prairie was in full bloom. This was a mixed bag as it also triggered our seasonal allergies. But the beauty of the blooms was undeniable. Prairie rose, sunflowers, milkwort, and bee blossom were all around. On a hillside covered in prairie smoke I got down on one knee and asked my girlfriend to marry me. She is now my fiancé.

After getting engaged, the animals seemed to appear as if to congratulate us. We saw two pairs of wild horses, and a whole herd of bison.

The last day of our trip was through the eastern edges of Montana and Wyoming, going south. This area reminded me of the exact ecosystem where I grew up: rolling grasslands with ponderosa pines on the crests of hills. We stopped briefly at Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming and marveled at how familiar and different it felt from Colorado. We noticed a lot of oak trees in this area, the same oak trees we had seen in the Black Hills. At Devils Tower we also saw signs that indicated falcons were roosting on the giant rock. We didn't see any, but we did look for patches of white to indicate bird poop under a nest or a roost.

In any case, that was our trip. I think these photos and descriptions show that the Great Plains is far from a boring ecosystem, and that a tremendous diversity of landscapes and wildlife can be found in this region. Grasslands are some of the least protected ecosystems and it is high time they received the appreciation they deserve!