After an uneventful sunrise experience this morning, we left Badlands National Park mid day and drove onwards toward east South Dakota.  There are still a few national parks on our agenda, but for the next 10 days or so we’ll take a break since we will head over to Chicago to attend a friend’s wedding.

As we drove across Fort Pierre National Grassland, I was captivated by the hay bales in the field.  We stopped our car several times until I finally found a good foothold to capture a hay bale in close distance.  Hay bales might look too “ordinary” for most people, but I always wanted to photograph it.

In case you are curious, this is how close I stand to take the above picture.

It didn’t take us very long to arrive at a small town called Oacoma.  We decided to call it the day and get settled.  It was drizzling in the evening, and the clouds were heavy.  I still decided to take my chances to photograph a beam of sunset color.  Unfortunately the sun never broke from the clouds, but I still got a steal of 5 minutes for the following 3 shots at Missouri River.