The Little Missouri River is the badlands' maker and its highway. For most of the year it is too low to float, but in the brief weeks of spring runoff it swells enough to carry a canoe, and paddlers seize the window to drift the length of the badlands from a vantage no road can match — down at the river's own level, gliding beneath the buttes.

Drifting the Heart of the Badlands

It is a wilderness float in the truest sense: no dams, no towns, no traffic, only the current, the cottonwoods and the wildlife that comes to drink. Bighorn sheep pick their way along the bluffs, bison ford the shallows, and beaver work the banks in the long spring evenings. The paddler shares the river with the same creatures Roosevelt watched.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• The Little Missouri is floatable mainly during the spring runoff.
• The river runs undammed through the length of the badlands.
• Paddlers share the water with bighorn sheep, bison and beaver.

The season is short, the water cold, and the logistics real, but the reward is the badlands at their most serene and secret. The almanac counts a spring float on the Little Missouri among the finest wilderness journeys the plains can offer.