Western Trip Part 7 Custer State Park

If you look at a map of South Dakota, in the southern Black Hills you will see a patch of land labeled Custer State Park. Custer is one of the largest state parks in the lower 48. I don't know how I heard about it many years ago, but have wanted to go there for as long as I can remember. If you do look at the map, you will see Custer, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and Wind Cave in a small area. This makes for a very fun, scenic vacation. All of this is true, but distances are larger than they appear. It was a couple hours from Mt. Rushmore to our campsite.

We stayed 3 days at the campsite in one of the four campgrounds. There is a lot of wildlife. Like the Badlands, there is a bison herd.They are left alone all year except in September when there is a round up. Extra individuals are sold off. There are also mountain lions and rattlesnakes. On one of our hikes a rattler was in the rocks in front of us. We were warned by other hikers, but we could not find it. We did see a foot print of a mountain lion on the same hike. However, finding mule deer and pronghorn was easy. Also, we saw a herd of elk. The elk are not known to go anywhere near people at the park. However at dusk one night we saw the whole herd, albeit, half a mile away.

Lastly, there are wild donkeys in the park. They do come up to people and beg for food. They even  coordinate efforts where one will block the road, while others stick their head through your window. The park, puts up with the wild donkeys, but by my conversations, do not seem to like them much.

Within the first five minutes of driving into the park we saw the first three photos.

Turkey Vulture

This was the first yellow bellied marmot we
had ever seen

Thirteen Lined Ground Squirrel

                                       The donkeys as you can see, have no fear

As promised in an earlier post, the pictures of pronghorn got better. We saw hundreds on our trip. The best photo ops for them were in Custer

Don't know why this deer was in this little roadside mud pond, maybe to get flies off of her

                                     Two pronghorn males practicing for mating season

Upland Sandpiper

Photos are in the order taken

The Elk Herd, he were very excited to see them.
We had no idea how many opportunities
we would have to see any more

This was our campsite in an actual campground. We even got reservations months in advance. There is a brook right behind the trees. The bathroom and shower were only a few yards away. Since we had gone a week without being near a real bathroom never mind a shower AND it being a hundred degrees in the Badlands we were dirty! When I showered, the bottom of the tub ran dirty for the first couple minutes. Of the places we actually paid to camp, this was my favorite campground and campsite.

                                                      Mountain Bluebird

 The campground unlike the one in the Badlands is fenced in. The reason? The bison herd comes by and eats the grass outside the fence every few days. As we were packing up our last morning, sure enough there they were.

Mt Rushmore Western Trip Part 6

    I thought I'd share some pictures from my vacation out west in 2010. Of course Yellowstone and the other places I went are not in southern New England, but maybe these pictures will inspire someone to take a trip to any of these places. I'll put about ten to fifteen pictures of each place in a post. Each post will be of just one place. I'll start each post with this opening paragraph. If there are any question about any of the places (admission price, distance from town, etc.. just leave them in comments section and I will gladly answer them). Since these posts take about five minutes and there is not a lot of outdoors stuff going on right now, I'll probably post everyday, so check back often.

Mt Rushmore is about a seventy five mile drive from the Badlands. It is in the Black Hills which are about fifteen degrees cooler than the Badlands in the summer. As a matter of fact. Although it was almost 100 degrees in the Badlands, one of the mornings in the Black Hills, I woke up to thirty eight degree cold. This was the first week of July. Since I hadn't brought any, we went to a Walmart in Spearfish to buy sweatpants. 

We went to Mt Rushmore three times in a three day period. We didn't stay all day. We went for a couple hours, then went back at night for the lighting. The third time we went, was more of a saying goodbye. Being such an amazing, patriotic landmark that we may never see again, we wanted to take it in one last time.

He had a bright blue sky so taking postcard quality photos was easy

There is a rock  that is split along the trail. It perfectly frames Washington. I thought I had an original idea. However, when I got back to the gift shop, I saw a postcard from this angle. Made me think I was an artist. 

Everyone thinks that the statue takes up the whole mountain. As you can see here, it doesn't. Calendars and even my above photos are deceptive

There are some mountain goats at the National Monument. They are radio collared but they are wild. It was good that we saw them. They were the only mountain goats we saw on the trip

The avenue towards the viewing area is lined with all state flags. On a personal note, I get skinnier as we go through the vacation

Thomas.

                                                 Abraham

                                                             George

                                                           
                                                                    Teddy

With Ponderosa Pines andRock formations photo oppurtunities are limitless on "framing the photo"

DJ was quite excited to be this far from home.

If you ever go to Mt Rushmore, I strongly suggest you buy an ice cream. They have a flavor called Prairie Praline. It is absolutely the best ice cream I have ever had. Is there anything more American than a father and son enjoying an ice cream while viewing one of our countries most iconic monuments on a summer road trip? Believe me, I know how lucky I was.

There is a scenic byway in the Black Hills. There are tunnels through the mountains. The tunnels were intentionally made to face Mt Rushmore. 

                                               More "framing"

Badlands Wildlife Western Trip Part 5

It's mid winter. There aren't any stripers to fish for in Providence. There is thin layer of ice on the ponds but it is not safe. Since there really isn't anything going on, I thought I'd share some pictures from my vacation out west in 2010. Of course Yellowstone and the other places I went are not in southern New England, but maybe these pictures will inspire someone to take a trip to any of these places. I'll put about ten to fifteen pictures of each place in a post. Each post will be of just one place. I'll start each post with this opening paragraph. If there are any question about any of the places (admission price, distance from town, etc.. just leave them in comments section and I will gladly answer them). Since these posts take about five minutes and there is not a lot of outdoors stuff going on right now, I'll probably post everyday, so check back often.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Badlands are full of wildlife. We spent much of our three days looking for animals. There is a buffalo herd and a flock of bighorn sheep. There is a large prairie dog town along with pronghorn and mule deer. The Badlands were our first experience with the west. So for us everything we saw was a new experience


This was the first wild buffalo we saw. We had just crossed into the Sage Creek Wilderness and the livestock barrier. Designed to keep herd animals on one side of the road or another. This big guy was roaming the fence line

 Meadowlark

 Prairie Dog, the grass was much greener in the national park as opposed to the prairie dog town by the convenient store

Many of the bighorn sheep are radio collared for scientific studies. Although these studies are important, a collar does make a picture seem less wild. So we tried to get pics of bighorn without collars.

Lark Sparrow

The term "traffic jam" takes on a different meaning in National Parks. We had to wait at this buffalo jam for almost a half hour.  They simply would not move out of the road, and our campsite was a few miles down the other side.

This Tatonka (Lakota term for bison, which we used a lot) was only about six feet from DJ in the car while we were waiting for the road to clear.

One of the first mule deer we saw. Notice the giant ears

Black Billed Magpie

Burrowing owls live in prairie dog towns. They use the tunnels to nest in. We were lucky to see a couple of them

One of the first pronghorn we saw. The first was on the interstate in Wisconsin. This was the first one we were fairly close to. I assure you, the pics of mule deer and pronghorn will improve if you keep following