Sunday, July 8, 2012

July 7th: Hot times and donkey kisses


Today we decided to check out two more area National Parks: Jewel Cave and Wind Cave.  On the way we stopped in Custer, SD, and enjoyed the local ambience of coffee, bison statues, and tourists.  We got to Jewel Cave a little late to get decent tour times for the cave walk so opted to buy tickets for the early tour tomorrow.  We’ll be on the road early.  We did hike a trail through the burned remains of the Jasper Fire, South Dakota’s biggest of 85,000 acres back in 2000.  Very stark in places.  At Wind Cave we checked out the displays on local wildlife and set out back through Custer State Park to find them.  Pretty successful too with Pronghorn Sheep, donkeys (they definitely weren’t too wild), another large herd of bison, and of course prairie dogs.  Still haven’t seen an eagle yet though.  Tonight’s movie at the campground was on the annual buffalo roundup where they cull out about 500 of the bison annually from the herd of about 1500 and sell them to buffalo ranchers.  Some of those have even gone to the farmer south of Bowling Green, Ohio in previous years.









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