7-9-11

So after a pretty underwhelming experience with the black hills' most famous attractions last night, we didn't have high expectations for today. We decided to head over to Custer State Park and travel the wildlife loop road. On the way we stopped in the town of Custer for some groceries for a picnic lunch. Right when we got into the park things started to look up. We passed some amazing rock formations, beautiful meadows, serene lakes with granite shores, and some amazing campsites. By the time we reached the visitor center we had already promised each other that we would come back here to camp someday . We had read that there were some geocaching sites in the park so i ran in to get coordinates from the visitor center while Lucca had her nap in the car. Turns out the geocaching wasn't what we thought, but the ranger gave me a ton of information on what not to miss.
We weren't on the wildlife loop road more than 10 minutes when we had to stop to let the parks resident Bison Herd of about 1200 cross the road. Unfortunately my camera battery died almost immediately.









Without the camera we decided the best plan was to skip the sites in Custer State Park and head to Wind Cave National Park just south for a tour ( can't really take photos in a cave right?). On the way we pulled off the road for a picnic lunch with a view. Jack found tons of dandelions to blow. Lola bummed out the mood a little when she rolled in a huge stinky pile of bison poop.




















After lunch we continued on and were soon greeted by the local "wild" burros. They were so "wild" that Jack and I got out to pet them. Lucca was a little freaked out when they came up to her window so she stayed inside.





We turned off the main paved road onto a dirt road that was to take us into the National Park, right away we drove through a huge prairie dog town.





We also saw White Tailed Deer, Pronghorn, and more Bison on the way to the cave.


The cave tour was really cool too. We toured only a tiny portion of the massive 160 miles of tunnels.





After the tour we headed back to Custer and stopped at the doggie automat and washed Lola. She still smells, might have to take her again tomorrow.


Dinner...then bed. What a day. After today the Black Hills have moved up to one of the highlights of my trip. Tomorrow we hope to see what the rest of this amazing place has to offer.

Location:Custer, SD ( Black Hills)