Tuesday, October 4

A BISON DAY.

Day 358 – It rained all night. We experienced our first South Dakota thunderstorm, and my was it grand! The loudest thunder, like a HUGE explosion, it was amazing. Buffalo-sized thunder! The high today was only 57 degrees and it switched around from sunny skies to skies black with oncoming storms, to rain, and back to sun again. Because there’s not much other than open spaces, there is so much SKY to see. Storms are really something here!

We went for a drive today figuring we’d only be out a couple of hours with the dark clouds making it look like that was the plan. But we left about 10:30 a.m. and didn’t get back to the RV until about 6 p.m. Today we saw Wild Turkeys, White-Tailed Deer, Bison, Horses, Prong-horned Antelope, Magpies, a Chipmunk, Prairie Dogs, and Wild Burros. First we drove south and east on the Wildlife Loop Road to the new Bison Center, which was just opened this year. This is a beautiful building located in the area where the rounded up Bison are being kept. There appeared to be more Bison there than we saw yesterday – the ones that were rounded up were still enclosed in the very large area that’s fenced.

It was pouring down rain when we got to the Bison Center. It was a beautiful building with many exhibits about the history of the Park’s Bison herd.

When we departed we were hungry and it was around 1 p.m. We drove further on the Wildlife Loop until we got to the State Game Lodge, one of several lodges within Custer State Park. There were a couple of tourist buses in the parking lot, so we figured they were still serving lunch. It was a buffet, a very good one, with all kinds of meat dishes (which we don’t eat), but they did have a salad bar, vegetables, rice, potatoes, pasta salad, and a dessert bar. We did just fine.

After lunch, we drove to the main Visitor’s Center, also one of several that serve the Park. (Custer State Park is one of the largest Parks in the continental U.S. at 71,000 acres.) After walking through the Center, we watched a movie about the history of Custer State Park, which was very good (the movie played in a theatre every 30 minutes).

We drove to a couple of lakes that are part of the State Park and drove through the adjacent campgrounds. The scenery was beautiful. The lakes were kayak-friendly. The campgrounds all had campsites that would fit the RV and Honda – a good thing to know when we come back here again (and we will). It can get crowded here, and now we know there are lots of camping options within the Park. We stopped at the Gordon Stockade Historical Site and walked around the grounds. Gordon Stockade was the site of an illegal settlement of gold rush prospectors on a Plains Indian reservation.

Again the skies darkened; we kept on driving and got caught in the rain. Oddly, the wind didn’t pick up; you’d have thought the storm would’ve included high winds.

We finished the Loop Drive, then decided to take some of the gravel roads that travel within the Loop. We really wanted to see some Bison that were in the wild. We’d heard that they don’t round up the larger, older males because they were hard to manage. They’d have to be somewhere, and more than likely they wouldn’t be near the Wildlife Loop Road where all the visitors drive.

The dirt roads we took today were quite manageable in the Honda, very well maintained with few potholes and rocks. We saw very few cars on these roads, and we’re looking forward to driving more of them throughout the Park in the next couple of days.

Did we find any Bison? Yes! Great big huge male Bison. And also deer, but not with the Bison. We saw one older Bison chowing down on the grasses, all by himself, and we spent a lot of time watching him. As he ate, we could see the steam rising from his mouth. And we saw a group of 5 Bison together, one of them was amusing as he tried to scratch his hide on a small tree and almost knocked the tree over.

Near the end of the dirt road we drove through a horse campground, which was large and had campsites big enough for big trucks pulling horse trailers and with horse corrals near the campsites. The horseback riding here must be great, and this campground was a wonderful idea.

When we got back to the RV, we marveled on the Bison we’d seen in the wild. The girls weren’t thrilled with our absence, but we had a great day. Tomorrow if the weather is good and there’s lots of sun, we hope to drive the Needles Drive. This road goes through some awesome rock formations. And we’d love to drive more well-maintained dirt roads. Who knows what we’ll see.