Next stop was the Badlands Petrified Gardens.  It's an outdoor park that has a collection of the largest petrified trees and logs ever found in the Badlands.  Not the actually Badlands National Park, cause it's illegal to take anything from the park.  You can get a $250,000 fine, and a 90 day jail sentence for taking something even a leaf.  This collection of stuff is from the areas outside the park.  Th story of Petrified wood as told by a sign in the Petrified Gardens: "Geologists believe that sixty or seventy million years ago, all western South Dakota was included in a great inland sea.  During the flood time, logs floated into the sea, becoming water logged, and sank to be covered with layers of sand and silt.  As the molecules of wood decayed or were replaced by molecules of silica and other substances in solution.  Later this huge inland sea receded, as a geological upheaval producing the Black Hills.  Ages of erosion by wind and rain then acted to produce the area known as the Badlands, and expose the petrified wood and fossils that are now found today."  This is a family owned and collected garden. pictures to come.