Happy birthday, Badlands National Park in South Dakota. First established as a national monument in 1939, Badlands was redesignated as a national park in 1978. Visitors are often surprised by the park's unexpected beauty. Wild pinnacles and buttes rise starkly out of the seemingly endless mixed grass prairie, a virtual sea of grasses that flow in the breeze towards the horizon. The landscape is dynamic -- the light changes, the animals move, the tall spires weather and erode. Look closely and you’ll see every color of the rainbow painted in delicate brush strokes across this dramatic wilderness. And maybe a bighorn sheep, too. Photo by Jon Reynolds (www.sharetheexperience.org).