The Badlands

 

Sunday – May 16, 2021

Today’s agenda is the Badlands, so again, we went to town for breakfast and to post pictures to the blog.  The restaurant was really busy, no internet, so that process took a while (I had to use our hot spot), then we fueled.  It was probably 9:45 before we got on the road, and the Badlands is more than 100 miles away.  Once on I-90, we were in Wall Drug country, now.  We needed a map of the park so we stopped in the town of Wall at the National Grasslands Visitor Center, but it was closed, so we went to Wall Drug (we had planned on avoiding that, we had stopped in there on our one previous visit to this area in 1979).  But they had free maps, so that worked.  When we were there before, it was one long store, with individual shops.  Now it is a mall.

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We passed a blooming lilac bush in town, so it was worth the stop.  The bush was in front of a house, which I thought might be vacant, but Joe didn’t stop so all I had was the sighting, not even a whiff.

We stopped at a rest stop just before Wall, and they had this carving of the Faces on the outside.

As we got to the entrance to the Park, a small group of buffalo were grazing right there.

The dirt road in the Park was not nearly as good as the one in Custer.  This one is very wash-boardy.

The Badlands are a beauty of their own, different from anything else.  Some of the peaks, gullies and buttes reminded us of Bryce Canyon, some of the Rim in Arizona, but they are really unlike anything we have seen.  And they have a lot of different looks.  The Grasslands were on one side of the road, beautiful green, rolling hills, and just across the road were these gouges in the landscape.  Sometimes we were looking down on them, sometimes we were looking up, and toward the end of the park, we were right amongst them, with kids climbing on them.  For most of the day it was cloudy (it only sprinkled once though), so some of the colors were not as brilliant and they would have been in the sun.

At our second overlook stop, we were lucky to find a group of 4 Bighorn Sheep, rams this time, grazing just over a ridge.  Two of them were thinking about battling it out, but one gave up easily.

92, Joes pic.

A few miles further, we saw a single ewe.

Not nearly as many animals here, and I wasn’t going to take pictures of them today, but we got this great picture of a line of pronghorn, so I couldn’t resist.

The prairie dogs are everywhere.  There is a Prairie Dog Town, which covers acres and acres.  But they are about anywhere there is flat ground (prairies).  We read at one of the exhibits that Blackfooted  ferrets live off of them, and owls and foxes, I think, use their abandoned holes.  We never saw any ferrets but we saw hundreds of prairie dogs.  One town we went through on the way back, maybe Rapid City, had a huge statue of a prairie dog (I didn’t get a picture.)

We are amazed at the rolling hills in this state.  We don’t know what the east side of South Dakota looks like, but this west side is picture perfect, looks like a golf course.

The drive we did took us in and out of the Park a few times.  We kept trying to figure out where we had driven on our other trip here but just couldn’t remember.

While out of the Park, I spotted a fence row lined with lilacs.  I yelled stop, stop, and got to pick my first bouquet.  I am now a happy camper!

Back in the Park, some of the colors changed.  This at Yellow Mounds Overlook reminded us of the mustard-colored cliffs we saw in Death Valley.

And here, we saw Bighorn Sheep in their natural habitat, climbing and grazing on steep cliffs.  There were 6 here, all ewes.  That was exciting.

I took lots of pictures, but here are a few more looks of the Badlands.

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Joe thought we needed some pictures of the Jeep doing its thing, taking us places we want to go.

Finally we finished this drive and headed back to I-90. We left the park about 3:45.   Again, lunch didn’t happen today, so we went back to Wall.  The only thing we saw in town besides Wall Drug was a Dairy Queen and a Subway, so unwillingly, we went back to Wall Drug.  Their café seats 530, so there was plenty of room, but their food was mediocre, like bar food but not particularly good.  But we ate, then were on our way again.

At Rapid City, we took the Highway back to Keystone.  Keystone is a very touristy town, reminds me of Gatlinburg.  They did have a fascinating wood sculpture shop that looked like it was worth a visit.  Maybe tomorrow.  We drove on to the Iron Mountain Byway which would take us back to Custer State Park in time for a little wildlife viewing.  This road was not for the faint of heart.  17 miles, 314 curves, 6 tunnels, most of them too small for the RV.  Since we are in the Black Hills National Forest, I guess they call this a hill, not a mountain, but it was steep in places, with hairpin turns.

Here’s a picture of the road ahead on the GPS.

Near the bottom, there was a turnoff for a pretty little lake, beautiful setting.  Notice the huge boulder in the background behind the jeep.

Joe just had to drive through the puddle.  That’s me inside, waving, this time.

Just as we neared Custer State Park, we began to see deer.  Lots of deer.  And inside the Park, we spotted our first elk.  There were 6 bulls grazing in the trees.  Further down the road, we saw a single elk cow, and then 3 more cowa just before we left the Park.  We were afraid the elusive elk were going to remain elusive, but we found them!

We didn’t drive the whole Wildlife Loop tonight, since it was 8:00, we just drove across the top part of it on our way back to Custer.  The deer were out, some right beside the road, and again, in the front yards on the way into town.

Today’s wildlife count

Deer – 35 in the Park

Deer – 88 between the Park and home

Elk – 10

I didn’t keep track of the pronghorn today.

It was a long day, we drove 330 miles and spent 12 hours in the Jeep.  The weather was good, although rain was predicted in the afternoon, we just had sprinkles one time.  We are enjoying this country, today was another good day.  Tomorrow’s agenda is Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse.  We saw Crazy Horse from the highway today, but will drive back to it tomorrow and check it out.  Oh, and Keystone again.  The rock shop where I buy my tumbling materials is located in Keystone, so we are going to try to pop in there and check it out.  We are hoping for a shorter day tomorrow, something less than 12 hours.

 

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.