TIL about America’s National Grasslands

Read the full post at - TIL about America’s National Grasslands On my summer trip through the Dakotas, I stopped in Wall, South Dakota. Most people know Wall for exactly one thing – Wall Drug. And yes, I stopped. And yes, it was terrible. It was so over-the-top, so relentlessly tacky, such a pure distillation of tourist trap that it looped all the way back around to awesome. It’s like Las Vegas – so trashy that you just have to respect it. I respect Wall Drug. It’s still terrible. It was exactly as Bill Bryson said in Lost Continent – “It’s an awful place, one of the world’s worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won’t have a word said against it.” But! Wall, South Dakota has a much better reason to stop. It’s home to the National Grasslands Visitor Center. America’s national grasslands are basically National Forests…but grasslands. They’re managed by the US Forest Service for multiple use – wildlife, recreation, grazing, scenery, and ecosystem services, but also mining, oil…