Little Jerusalem State Park

Donna had scheduled us on the ranger led tour for Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park this morning. If you are not on the tour, you are limited to the two trails on the top of the park. The two hour ranger led tour goes down between the hoodoos.

Little Jerusalem is a small (220 acre) badlands where the chalk ground erodes away unevenly, leaving hoodoos behind.

Here is a closeup of the layers wearing away unevenly. You can see there are some harder layers that stick out more, and some softer layers that have worn away further back into the rocks.

Cracks can also form, creating dangerous conditions. The ranger was careful to keep us away from those areas. She also kept us away from some active nests, so the owls were not disturbed.

The chalk is an ancient seabed, rich in fossils.

The hoodoos are used by a number of birds for their nests as there are not a lot of trees in western Kansas. Swallows build their nests from mud.

It was very dry, they hadn’t had meaningful rain in months. A few cactus had new growth.

We did see some other animals. Pronghorn off in the distance, the ranger had been there nearly two years and this was her first pronghorn sighting.

Along the walkway in the parking lot we saw the larks.

Driving in, we saw these mule deer out in the milo field along the gravel road to the park.

We swung by Monument Rocks which is a formation of a few hoodoos out in the middle of some ranch land.