Went through Custer State Park, which is a remarkable place. I was going to skip it, since after having seen two days of the Black Hills I thought it looked too much like the Appalachians I’m all too familiar with. I’m glad I resisted my instincts. Custer State Park is exceptional; it is the perfect mix of high prairie sprinkled with Ponderosa pine. Wildlife is abundant. I was nearly run over by a pronghorn antelope.
Wild burros (small donkeys) are also plentiful. They are also fed plentifully too. This guy stepped up for a treat.
And when another one on the driver side didn’t get a treat he decided to threaten me with the removal of my mirror:
I can’t say enough about how beautiful I thought Custer State Park was. It’s so difficult to capture the vistas.
I turned down a lengthy dirt road to do some hiking. Coming back from one of my hikes I walked straight into a cattle drive, complete with cowboys whistling and cracking whips to drive them on. It lasted for quite awhile, like a slow moving train. I captured video of it with my other camera. Once I figure the best way to shrink the massive size of the High Definition video I’ll post it.
The park is home to the largest herd of privately owned bison in the country. One of the rangers told me that the bulls which are out near the road are those that lost the recent rut. She said the bulls that won the rut stay off in the hills and keep an eye on the females from a distance. She said they are significantly larger than the older, weaker bulls which lost the rut and don’t mind being closer to the road.
I then went into Wind Cave National Park for the afternoon. It’s nearly as large as Jewel Cave and contains over 90% of the world’s box work formations. I enjoyed the tour and the cave less than Jewel Cave, however, as did everyone else I spoke to.
Afterward I went into Hot Springs to finish the day. Hot Springs has an active main street, which snakes its way all through town and is rather confusing. Side roads come into it with no stop sign or traffic light, and it’s impossible to know who has the right of way. It seems that the main flow of traffic has the right of way – you just have to know what that flow is! The Best Western where I stayed lost its internet shortly after I got there, requiring me to post this the following day.