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Badlands Wildlife: Sunset and Stargazing Tour
4.9
41 Ratings
Sage Creek Wilderness Area
Experience the Badlands’ wildlife at sunset, then stargaze in secret spots. Capture unforgettable moments with expert photography.
Experience the Badlands’ wildlife at sunset, then stargaze in secret spots. Capture unforgettable moments with expert photography.
Duration:
7 hours
Cancellation:
24 hours
Highlights
- Sage Creek Wilderness Area - Discover the best way to experience the park at sunset. We’ll guide you through the Sage Creek Wilderness area, showcasing various formations with the sunset behind us. This creates stunning opportunities for wildlife, shape, and shadow photography. It’s our favorite tour spot, and you’ll soon see why.
- **Hay Butte…
- Sage Creek Wilderness Area - Discover the best way to experience the park at sunset. We’ll guide you through the Sage Creek Wilderness area, showcasing various formations with the sunset behind us. This creates stunning opportunities for wildlife, shape, and shadow photography. It’s our favorite tour spot, and you’ll soon see why.
- Hay Butte Overlook - One of the most breathtaking views of the Badlands, often overlooked. We’ll make sure to stop here for photos and possibly set up for a sunset viewing.
- Badlands Wall - We’ll prepare for a spectacular night sky at a special location known only to us. Our tour includes blankets, comfy mats, and pillows to maximize your sky-gazing experience. Relaxing on the cozy mats, we’ll observe planets, shooting stars, and the Milky Way Galaxy.
Our guide will capture night photos and share them with you at the end of the tour. We can also teach you how to take them with your phone. Red light flashlights are provided to preserve your night vision!
We also offer a night sky chart showing constellations and satellites passing overhead. This is a truly unique experience for both adults and kids. Badlands National Park offers a clarity of the night sky that few in the United States get to enjoy, with over 7,500 stars visible on any given night.
- Pinnacles Overlook - We’ll enter Badlands National Park at the magical time just before sunset. We’ll set up folding chairs at the perfect spot for viewing. Afterwards, we’ll head to the Amphitheater for night sky viewing with a telescope, watching the stars illuminate the sky.
- Bigfoot Pass Overlook - Named after Chief Bigfoot, who led his tribe through the Badlands while being pursued by the U.S. Army until they reached Wounded Knee, where they were tragically massacred. Chief Bigfoot was known for his diplomatic skills, but unfortunately, that didn’t save him and his tribe from the genocide carried out by the U.S. Government and Col. James Forsyth.
- Big Badlands Overlook - Just moments away from our secluded night sky viewing spot. Soon, our comfortable viewing area will be set up, eyes will be wide open, and the show will begin!
What's Included
- Private transportation
- Zero-Gravity Folding Chairs for Star Viewing
- Binoculars
- Blankets
- Bottled water
- Snacks
- Constellation Locator Software
- Private transportation
- Zero-Gravity Folding Chairs for Star Viewing
- Binoculars
- Blankets
- Bottled water
- Snacks
- Constellation Locator Software
What's Not Included
- Gratuities
- Gratuities
Additional Information
This is our favorite tour! We care about you, your experience, and your time in South Dakota.
You’ll be taken to special locations where animals congregate during the setting sun. As you enjoy the wildlife of the Badlands, we’ll take care of any photos you wish. The “Blue Hour” begins after sunset and continues for an hour, highlighting the wild…
This is our favorite tour! We care about you, your experience, and your time in South Dakota.
You’ll be taken to special locations where animals congregate during the setting sun. As you enjoy the wildlife of the Badlands, we’ll take care of any photos you wish. The “Blue Hour” begins after sunset and continues for an hour, highlighting the wild formations with the bright blue and orange sky.
Next, we’ll take you to the night viewing area in the park at a location only My XO Adventures knows. We’ll see planets, shooting stars, and the Milky Way Galaxy.
Our highly skilled guide will capture night photos and share them at the end of the tour, ensuring you have great memories of your experience.
Location
Sage Creek Wilderness Area
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
Customer Ratings
4.9
(41 Ratings)
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Thefilthynurse
Sep 12, 2025
An amazing evening at the Badlands! - Logan was an exceptional guide. He is extremely knowledgeable about the area and the wildlife; we kept him talking! He was also very courteous to our comfort and needs throughout the tour. This tour exceeded our expectations in every way! Additionally, the tour staff kept us informed from the day we booked until the day of the tour. We were well informed.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Donrm9683vn
Sep 11, 2025
Sunset and stars Badlands - Fantastic tour! Logan taught us so much area history and nature. Saw so many things we would never have seen on our own. Wildlife and scenery both incredible!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jenniferck868zc
Sep 5, 2025
Five Star Experience ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Could not have asked for more! Excellent communication from the get go all the way thru the arranged pick up. Every detail well thought out & planned…complete with beverages, sandwiches, reclining chairs, blankets, a lot of great humor & shared photos! So educational as well as stunningly beautiful! Aimee and Daniel went out of their way to provide an exceptional experience. We arrived as customers and left as friends. We will absolutely use My XO Adventures again and again! Cannot recommend enough! Five star service all around.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Camper49792630455
Jul 28, 2025
The day the Milky Way Stood Still - I had been eying XO Adventures for a few weeks before our trip and was too busy to pull the trigger. The 2 Sundays before the trip, I spoke with Aimee to have a few questions answered and then book for the week after. I was looking for a service minded team that could take my family (2 adults, 2 kids - 9 & 15) and I on an adventure to see the many sights and talk about the history region, significant events, context and frame of reference for the events, and the aftermath. At the same time, share hidden knowledge and locations to spawn some interest for my daughter into American History, as she is taking it this coming year. Aimee helped me set that up, checked in with us up to and through our experiences including planning meals and I'm eternally grateful.
Day 1: We took the nighttime tour of the Badlands with one primary event to check off our bucket list, getting pictures of the Milky Way and seeing a nighttime sky full of what the universe has to offer us without the human touch of light pollution. What we ended up getting was an adventure with Dan that blew our socks off. It was full of location and environmental history, military history, a wide range of animal sightings (ranging from owls, bison, different types of deer, prairie dogs, bats), farming knowledge that tied the history of the people to the environment and our country, and the hard truth of our native American family. He taught us a lot and left us with a lot to consider and research further. This was like you’re a kid on Christmas morning when you first wake up and the excitement to see what Santa left.
Up until this point, the tour was based on Dan asking us questions on what we wanted from the trip and accommodating as we drove and talked. We shared the galaxy focus but shared we really wanted to understand and appreciate the Badlands region. Well, he made it happen! While we travelled around and sharing knowledge and points of view, he was waiting and leading us up to the main event. With the light changing in the sky and clouds moving, he explained and shared the most majestic landscapes that were different by the second. The Badlands look like white clay and rock during the day but, when you hit sunset and dusk, you start to see the lines of the layers of history creating live paintings of pinks, purples, browns, reds, and yellows. As you go through, the different chaotic formations and the colors with the animals transitioning to nighttime, make for amazing pictures and memories. This leads us to the last outlook with the gravity chairs looking up into thousands of stars. Dan broke out some tools for the kids using his cell phone so they could explore and was still making sure they were involved, entertained and hopefully learning something. All I can say is WOW! The bucket list item was checked for all of us with one of the largest checkmarks of any on the list. All I can say is thank you Dan and, thank you XO Adventures for one of the two best nights on our trip!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Dakr2014
Jul 27, 2025
Night sky not to be missed - Amazing amazing. That’s all I can say. Daniel is an exceptional guide and is easy to talk to and be with. He showed us wonderful sights throughout the badlands and watching the night sky is unbelievable. Wonderful tour.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Exploration651714
Jun 30, 2025
Beautiful scenery with fun, knowledge guide - This is a great tour to see the Badlands during the golden hour and view the night sky. We saw so much wildlife, the amazing landscape, and night sky. Daniel was kind and informative and made our group feel comfortable. There were storms in the area, but they didn’t impact our tour. Daniel made sure to keep tabs on the storm throughout the evening to keep everyone safe. I would definitely recommend My XO Adventures to anyone.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Gailf285
Jun 29, 2025
The Badlands in a thunderstorm are an amazing experience and our guide made a great sight even better. - We originally booked this tour with the hope of seeing the stars at night. As it turned out there were clouds and thunderstorms that night, so no stars, but as it turned out, the Badlands in a thunderstorm is an amazing sight. The colors in the rock striations are intense and the stormy skies add an incredible counterpoint to the varied landforms. It was awesome seeing the rain pour down on other parts of the peaks and watch the lightning in the clouds.
Our guide Dan was wonderful. Given the weather situation and the fact that nighttime viewing of the stars would not be good, he texted us and offered us an earlier start time. The approach to the Badlands was through back roads which I would never have found on my own, and we saw more wildlife closer up than at any other time in our trip to the Black Hills. Dan was a scoutmaster and had that great scoutmaster way of adding details and telling informative stories. He is also a skilled amateur photographer and took many pictures of the sights (and of us), which he edited and emailed to us after the trip. His pictures were much better than mine (!!!) and will be an important part of my scrapbook.
I am so happy that we took this trip and even happy that we ended up with the thunderstorm rather than the stars. But I would still like to see the Milky Way, so if we head back to the Badlands, we will be sure to book this trip again and hope for clear skies on our second time out.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Rachael_j
Apr 26, 2025
A Must Do Tour - We had such a fun time and got to learn the history behind ranching, farming and so much more! We also were able to see plenty of wildlife and the tour was personalized to what we wanted to see.
Review provided by Viator
Guadaluped897
Feb 28, 2025
Amazing Tour!!!! - We had an absolutely amazing experience with our vacation guide, My XO Adventures Daniel, during our trip to South Dakota! From Mount Rushmore to Devils tower, and the Badlands, every moment was unforgettable. Daniel provided superb customer service and was incredibly knowledgeable about the areas.
Not only did he take us to the places we wanted to see, but he also surprised us with many hidden gems along the way. Instead of sticking to the expressways, he took us through scenic backroads, giving us the chance to witness breathtaking natural sights we would have otherwise missed.
There was never a dull moment, Daniel was super easy to talk to, incredibly friendly, and made sure we were always comfortable. He even brought water, coffee and snacks, going above and beyond to make our trip enjoyable.
I can't say enough great things about Daniel and how unforgettable he made our vacation! If I could give him a 10 star I would! If you're looking for a top-notch guide in South Dakota, I highly recommend “My XO Adventures” 100%!!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
I2168wwrichardg
Feb 7, 2025
Fantastic tour - The whole tour was awesome and quite tailored to my family and i. the night sky was the highlight. Words do not do it justice. I highly recommend My XO tours they really did well by us
Review provided by Tripadvisor
