Custer State Park

 Saturday - May 15, 2021

Today was all about Custer State Park, and it was a long day.  But we saw lots of wildlife, which was our goal.   We had breakfast in town so I could post yesterday’s blog, then headed into the Park.

Our first wildlife sighting was a turkey right after we entered the Park.  There are 4, I think, lakes in this park, very pretty.  We pulled in to most of them. Several people were fishing, at the lakes and streams.  We actually saw one guy pull a fish in.  Made me want to go get our poles.

Our next sighting was a small herd of female bighorn sheep, right next to the road.  We weren’t sure whether they were sheep or mountain goats, but one of their safari vehicles happened by so we asked the driver.  He said the males are usually on the Needles drive, so we will try to work that in another day.

There was a lot of water around, creeks, streams, and this is a beautiful park, different terrain than we have ever seen.  Some of the rolling hills reminded us of the Big Lake area, but this is grander.  Also different colors of dirt – black, red, pink, sandstone.

We stopped at the Visitor Center, got a little information and watched the film.  Then we headed out to the Wildlife Loop.  And we saw our buffalo here.  We saw hundreds, probably thousands of buffalo today, singles, small groups, small herds, and big herds.  The last big herd we saw, at least 500, had a lot of babies with their moms.  I told Joe we found the nursery.

We found one small group of 10 right by the road, which we watched for about 45 minutes.  These two were scratching their backs on the tree limb.

And I finally got a picture of a pronghorn antelope.  We saw just a few of these today.

We drove lots of roads.  We watched buffalo near the road, and sometimes we would see herds in the distance, dotting the landscape. 

A lot of prairie dogs make their home here too.  We saw several of their villages or towns (not sure what they call them), popping in and out of their holes.  Joe watched one eating something, and when we got close, we found out he was eating a buffalo patty.  Well, there sure is no lack of food for him!

One view was absolutely breath-taking.  The red dirt really showed up in this picture.  I think I will try to enlarge this photo and have it printed.

But there is also a lot of fire damage here.  We don’t know when they had the big forest fire, but some of the hillsides look like pick-up sticks, others have dead trees still standing.  The fire really did a number of some of the forests here. It rained off and on all day, but since we were in the car it didn’t really bother us.  We had to stop a few times for buffalo in the road.

The Wind Cave Park is basically inside this park, so we took one of the exits and headed over there to check on tickets for their cave tours.  We found out they don’t sell in advance, they start selling at 8:00 and are usually sold out by 9:00, you need to be in line about 6:30.  So we think we will skip that event.  We asked about tours at the Jewel Cave, which is just down the road from where we are camped, and she said they were not open to tours yet, but you could watch a simulation at their Visitor Center.  So I guess we will pass on that as well.  (There were 723 stairs on this tour, so we were not too unhappy to skip this one.)  We did see a bit of wildlife here too, and drove the roads inside the park that we could, then we exited back into Custer.  By now it’s about 4:00, but cloudy and sometimes drizzly, so we decided to do our evening wildlife drive back on the Wildlife Loop, hoping we weren’t too early.  We pretty well drove every road in this area, and saw a lot of animals.  We saw our second batch of big horn sheep just beside an equestrian campground, and a couple of geese.

About 7:00 (yes, we are still going), we started seeing more turkeys, and the deer finally showed up.

We finally completed our drive and headed out of the park, back to the town of Custer.  We were slinging mud from the tires all the way, so Joe stopped at a car wash to try to clean the old jeep up a little.  The car wash was full of 4 side-by-sides also cleaning up, so we had to wait a few minutes, but he got the job.

There was a painted buffalo statue in front of the car wash that I had my eye on, so I got a picture of that.  As we drove through town, a spotted another painted buffalo on a side street so we will chase that down tomorrow

We will have to go back to town in the morning for me to post this, then we are headed to the Badlands.  We hope to have a bit shorter day tomorrow, since we were eating dinner about 9:00 tonight.  It rained on the way home, and several hours during the night.  Hoping tomorrow is a little better.  Our jeans and long sleeves feel good.

It was a good wildlife day.  Totals were:  

Buffalo - thousands

Bighorn sheep - 17

Geese - 4

Antelope - 7

Coyote - 2

Prairie Dogs - thousands

Turkeys - 12

Deer - 72*

*We saw 25 deer in the park, but 42 on our way back through town, mostly in people's yards.  I would guess those people aren't quite as excited with the deer as we are.  No time to proofread so I hope this all makes sense.

Arriving South Dakota

Friday - May 14, 2021 

After a chilly night (38 degrees) and a good night’s sleep, we were ready to get on with our exploration of this part of the country.  We liked our campground (Trailing Edge in Limon, Co), especially after 3 nights on a parking lot.  It was 43 when we got up this morning, time for jackets and jeans.  We actually turned on the furnace last night.

We saw 6 deer right at the edge of town, and 2 more during our drive.  However, in Colorado today we saw 44 pronghorn, and an additional 16 in Nebraska.  

 The windmills we saw yesterday in the distance were right by us today. 

We kept seeing this wall of clouds in front of us, getting bigger and bigger as we traveled toward it.  All of a sudden, we found ourselves in dense fog, with a little rain thrown in.  So with very low visibility, our antelope count went way down.

We finally cleared the fog, and the sun came back out.  We finally found a pull out for a break, so we walked around a bit.  I was hoping an accommodating antelope would mosey over for a photo op, but no such luck.

We entered the Pawnee National Forest and shortly thereafter crossed the state line into Nebraska (10:55).  We saw miles and miles of grasslands, rolling hills, cattle pasture.  Very few trees.  But when we got near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, we began to see a change in the terrain – actual bluffs.

Then came the Ogala National Forest, just before we crossed into South Dakota at 1:55 p.m.   We got to Hot Springs but ran out of signage so, after another u-turn,  we got directions when we fueled here.  On to our destination, we arrived at Wind Cave National Park at 3:20.  Joe said, “now our vacation begins.”  As soon as we entered the park, 4 buffalo greeted us!  After Joe stopped and got some pictures of them laying down, he honked to try to get them to move, but they didn’t.  After we pulled away, we wondered if they were statues.  But then we saw 2 more right away, and then another one.  And another one, which crossed the road in front of us and posed for a picture.

We drove passed the Visitor Center and on to the campground but didn’t find a spot, so we unhooked the jeep and went back to the Visitor Center.  When Joe had called a month ago, he was told they didn’t take reservations, it was first come-first serve, but he had worked there for 35 years and they had never been full.  Well, guess what.  They were full!  The ranger told us of another place, in the Black Hills National Forest, that might be available.  He said they had just opened that day but it was about 40 minutes away.  So we went back to the RV, Joe got it turned around, and we both drove to the national forest.  Besides the host, we are the only ones here.  But the sign on the highway says “area closed” so that might be the reason.  Anyhow, we are set up here for 2 nights at least, dry camping and no phone signal (no internet at all).  That's really the worst thing about this dry camping, no phone service.  

After we got situated, we drove back into Custer for dinner (lunch never happened today because we couldn’t find a pull-out).  On the way back to the campground, Joe, of course, wanted to drive some dirt roads looking for deer.  Well, that part was successful.  We saw 54 deer on our drive.  Earlier, he had noticed a dirt road that appealed to him (before we got to Hot Springs), and I pointed out that it had a gate.  He said, “I brought my bolt cutters with me in case they try to pull stuff like that.”  But he forgot his “authorized personnel” hat. 

We got back from our drive just before dark, about 7:30.  It got to be a long day, but we are looking forward to the next few days of sightseeing in the jeep.

We noticed in the grasslands that there were no cattle grazing there, so we wondered if that isn’t allowed.  Without internet, Joe was unable to research that tonight. 

 Joe really struggles with deciding between driving the touristy drives and seeing the touristy things, and doing his own exploring, driving the dirt roads and finding his own sights to see.  Every dirt road has his name on it.  We will see which struggle wins out tomorrow.

 Thursday - M:ay 13, 2021

After 3 days of Albuquerque, we finally got out of New Mexico.  It was 54 degrees when we got out of bed this morning.  With our new working brakes, we got on the road about 7:30, a good start for us.  We saw 3 hot air balloons as we were pulling out, which is practically an icon for New Mexico.  We crossed the state line into Colorado 3 hours later, at the top of Raton Pass, at 11:30.  As we came down off the pass, we could see the snow-capped Rocky Mountains in the distance. 

We stopped for sodas just a few miles later in Trinidad.   It was a windy 49 degrees, a bit chilly for us in our shorts.  The temperature for the New Mexico part of the drive today was mostly in the 50s, with occasional drops into the high 40s.  After we went over Raton Pass (elevation 7818), and into Colorado it warmed up in the 70s for the most part, and we drove at elevations below 5000 ft.  We saw lots of pronghorn antelope today, approximately 220 (we tried to count them all).  95% of them were on Joe's side of the road, and I never got a good picture.  180 of them we saw in the last 100 miles of New Mexico.  We only saw about 40 in Colorado.  But we did see 11 deer in Colorado.  Happy to be watching for wildlife again.  There were elk and bear warning signs when we came off Raton Pass but we didn't see any of them.

From Trinidad, we cut over to Colorado 71, which took us over part of the original Santa Fe Trail (lot of cattle drives from Texas on this trail),

 and across the Comanche National Grasslands.  I expected the grasslands to have foot-high grass waving in the wind, but maybe we were too early in the season.  Miles and miles of open prairie.  Lots of cattle too.  

As we neared Limon, our destination for this evening, we passed a house with 3 lilac bushes blooming.  Of course, we were passed before I could get Joe to stop.  But from there on, lilacs were added to my BOLO (be on the lookout) list.  We did pass one bush in Limon but it was barely budded out, so I'm hoping for more lilacs in my future.

We saw several solar farms today, but only one windmill farm, which was huge, covered the entire horizon just before Limon.  As open as this area is, I'm surprised there weren't more.

We reached our campground in Limon at 3:45, and Joe was ready to be done for the day.  408 miles today.  We hope to reach our first real destination tomorrow, Elk Mountain Campground in Wind of the Caves National Park, Hot Springs, South Dakota.  We plan to park there for 5 days and explore the area in the jeep, including Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, and the Badlands. 

Today was fairly uneventful, except for a tight squeeze at the fuel stop when Joe scratched a panel on the side of the RV when he got too close to the pump. But all in all, a peaceful drive.  Just what we needed after Monday's excitement.  

Fixing Brake Line

Wednesday - M;ay 12, 2021

Well, progress is slow.  We had hoped to get moving this afternoon, but the parts didn't get here from Denver until about 4:00, and Kevin showed up a little after 6:00 to start installing them.  Had we known, we would have done a little more exploring today, but instead, we waited all day at the RV, except for a quick run to Walmart around lunch time.  But things are looking up.  Approximately 2 hours later, with Joe's assistance, and $767 later, we are back in business. We have new brake lines on the front,  Kevin was a great guy, very professional and knowledgeable, and we think we are roadworthy now.  

All things considered, things could have been a lot worse.  We missed the collision, we made it safely to this parking lot, we have been very comfortable here and Cabela's has not bothered us at all, even through this will be our third night here.  The temperatures have been great and we have not had to use the A/C or the furnace in the RV, and the solar panels Joe installed shortly before we left have provided enough electricity that we have not had to run the generator much, and still been able to keep his sleep machine running all night and watch TV.  But we are certainly ready to move on, and hope the rest of the trip is much smoother.

Our Grand Plan is to go to the South Dakota, then North Dakota, then probably across Minnesota and Wisconsin and maybe the Upper Peninsula of Michigan again (we really like that area), then down through either Ohio or Indiana, depending on how much time we have to get to Florida by the 4th of July.  Lots of miles ahead of us, and hopefully lots of interesting things to see.