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.