Badlands.

Let's say you are a 17th Century French trapper coming up the Missouri River Valley. Or, more likely, you are just some 19th Century schmuck wending his or her way westward to start a new life in the Dakotas. When you left the trailhead back in Omaha, they told you to, "Beware the Badlands."

You took this advice dutifully but then after about a month or so of day after day of this:
You would settle for badlands, indifferent lands, anything to releive the tedium of day after day of miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles of grass.

So, a day or so later, you see something on the horizon. You think to yourself, or more probably just out loud so that you can hear a voice, any voice; Some mountains perhaps? Are these the Black Hills so soon? Pushing on, you crest a slight rise and you are faced with this:


Oh, shit. That's gonna take weeks to go around. You spend a day or so pushing further north a bit, but it only gets worse:


Better hope you topped off the water tanks at those many creeks a couple of weeks ago.