Custer State Park, SD

Tuesday, August 11, 2009
(high 82, low 46, sunny, no humidity)

Started off the day by taking a wonderful hillside shot of the campground. It’s in a beautiful location and voted one of the best KOA’s in the country. Too bad we are not really taking advantage of the campground.

Went to the National Woodcarvers’ Museum. Was kind of disappointed, it was mostly characitures, mostly all the work of one man.

Then we drove to Jewel Cave and decided we didn’t want to go underground on such a beautiful day, so had lunch in the car and headed to Custer State Park, a 71,000 acre prairie and mountainous park There we took the Wildlife Loop looking for prairie dogs, pronghorn, mountain goats, burros, bighorn sheep, deer, and buffalo/bison, where a herd of 1500 make their home.

Onward to another prairie dog town, then several pronghorn groups - named so due to the two-pronged antlers of the male.

Around another turn were several burros in the road. They are the descendents of the burros that used to carry people to 7,242-foot Harney Peak the highest point east of the Rockies. One particularly liked Fred!!!>

We saw two white-tailed deer along the way, too far away to take a decent picture.

Then up to the fire tower on a road where I closed my eyes. The road, with many hair-pin turns, was on the edge of the mountain with no guard rails. The view from the top was spectacular. My camera could not pick up the land in the far distance.

We drove by the buffalo corral. In September, the buffalo in the park all get rounded up. The spring calves are branded, the buffalo are checked out medically, and some of them get chosen to be auctioned off. The dirt at the corral is very red in color.

Along the way to Harney Peak, we had to travel through some real rocky areas and stone tunnels.

Here's some wild flowers we found by the side of the road.

Eventually Fred spotted a buffalo by the side of the road, about 20' from the car. He was very large and sweet looking but we were advised not to get out of the car, that they could charge any second. He just lay there and let me take his picture.

After the wildlife loop we proceeded to go up towards Harney Peak where the mountain goats like to hang out. The climb was too steep for me so we didn’t go up. We did not seen any goats. We did see Sylvan Lake though, a camping area that was so beautiful. The people were swimming in the sky-blue lake between the rocks.

We ate dinner in Hill City at the Alpine Inn. There is one item on the menu, bacon wrapped filet mignon, 6 oz for $8.95or 9 oz size for $10.95. With it you get a lettuce wedge and baked potato. People were lined up at the store to get in for dinner. It was very good!

Motorcycles are still everywhere from last week's rally at Sturgis.

Walking around Hill City after dinner we came across an old fashioned "shoot out". The marshalls had to run to ruffians out of town. Cute little skit to raise money for kids with cancer.