It looks a bit like the inside of a cave that has been turned inside out and warmed by the sun.
~Stefanie Payne
After our quiet stay in Medicine Bow NF, we were going to drive to the Badlands of South Dakota, but a new brown sign made us do a slight detour. Melissa charted a course for Wind Cave National Park (a new one for us) and the adjacent Custer State Park. She found us a campsite in the NPS campground and we were set. One thing to mention here - the smoke from the Canadian wildfires you have seen and read about was intense for this portion of our trip and finally started lifting a bit as we got to the Badlands a couple of days later.
Driving into Custer State Park, we were reminded of our favorite brown sign destination, Yellowstone. We took one of the dirt side roads and were rewarded with a Bison herd blocking the road, just like old times in Yellowstone!
-Bison jam, South Dakota style. Note the very hazy sun. (click photos to enlarge)
Though Melissa would be going to Yellowstone on her Museum trip in June and have plenty of chances to see the cute "red dogs", as baby Bison are often called, I would not, so this was a treat. And there were no crowds. A big difference is that these Bison (and most of the other large critters) are confined to these areas by fences and roadway cattle guards surrounding both parks. And, sadly, there are no bears (Grizzly or Black) or wolves.
-A baby bison nosing some seed heads in a meadow
That first afternoon, we drove several roads trying to get the lay of the land. The state park and the national park are adjacent to one another and it's easy to go fro one to the other with connecting roads. Along our drive, we spotted numerous small herds of Bison, some Mule Deer, an Elk, and lots of birds, including my photo-nemesis-bird, the Western Meadowlark. Though they were a common species seen and heard on our trip, I had never managed to get close enough for a decent shot. That changed as we were driving slowly on a park road, hearing their loud songs in several spots along the route. Suddenly, I saw one on a fence post on the other side of the road. I pulled off the road across from the bird and fired a few shots as it sang away. Finally!
-A Western Meadowlark finally is close enough for a photo (they usually manage to fly off before we can get close)
We spent the night at the Wind Cave NP campground, nothing fancy, but quite pleasant and very quiet. Next morning we had a Mule Deer and a Wild Turkey walk through camp and then we were off to the visitor center to get in line for tickets for a cave tour. We had heard you need to be there before they open to make sure you get tickets. Indeed, I was about 15th in line about 20 minutes before they opened. Another visitor told us people line up hours before the door opens in the busy summer season. Our tour wasn't until 11 a.m. so we decided to drive around and find a hiking trail for a morning walk. We picked the Cold Brook Canyon Trail as the brochure mentioned you hike through a prairie dog town...what's not to like!
-We quickly came across a large bull Bison near the trail. We gave him a wide berth and noticed he had a couple of hitchhikers, a pair of Brown-headed Cowbirds.
Shorty after our encounter with the Bison, we started walking through a prairie dog town inhabited by lots of curious Black-tailed Prairie Dogs.
-The prairie dogs didn't seem to mind us walking through their town, although I am sure they are used to these tall two-legged critters passing by.
Below is a short clip of a Black-tailed Prairie Dog going about its business as we pass through town
--A Black-tailed Prairie Dog having breakfast pauses to check out the strangers in town
-We paused for a rest at one of the cliffs along our hike and as I scanned the rock face I found yet another Great Horned Owl nest, this one with an adult and a chick just barely visible.
After the hike we headed over to the Visitor Center for our cave tour. There were about 40 people on the tour and we had an excellent young park ranger as our guide. She did a great job of engaging people and managing the herd, which gets a bit more complicated when you enter a cave. Our first stop was at the original entrance to the cave, a small hole barely big enough to crawl through. She explained the significance of the cave to the indigenous peoples, especially the Lakota, who believe this is the place whee their nation was born.
-The small hole on the lower left was the original entrance to Wind Cave. Now, you enter through a nice doorway and start a long climb down into the massive cave complex. It is believed to be the sixth longest cave in the world, with over 150 miles now surveyed. Its known depth is 643 feet. Studies of air flow through the entrances indicate that potentially only about 10% of the cave has been discovered. One other oddity about this cave is that there are six underground lakes where unique microbes have been discovered.
-Wind Cave is best known for this unusual formation called boxwork (found in few other places on Earth).. This honeycomb pattern is caused by thin blades of calcite projecting from the walls and ceilings of Wind Cave. The calcite fins intersect one another at various angles creating these box-like shapes. The fins were formed when dissolved calcium carbonate crystallized in cracks in the surrounding rock. The surrounding rock then eroded away leaving the boxlike calcite crystals.
After the cave tour, we decided to drive through both Wind Cave NP and Custer SP one more time in the hopes of seeing some Burrowing Owls and other wildlife (we did see 2 Burrowing Owls but they were too far off for pics).
-It was very windy and this Bison was having a good hair day nevertheless
-We stopped to watch a Bison calf and its mom interact
-Melissa caught some great shots of the calf with mom's tail blowing in the wind (photos by Melissa Dowland)
-While scouring the landscape for Burrowing Owls, we came across several huge prairie dog towns. These cute little guys are baby Black-tailed Prairie Dogs. An extended family unit of prairie dogs is called a coterie and usually consists of 1 to 6 genetically related females, their yearling and juvenile offspring, and one adult male that sires all the offspring while he is in charge of that group (males move around it seems).
-We really enjoyed watching these cute little rodents and listening to their many vocalizations. Research on prairie dogs has shown they have the most advanced vocabulary of any animal yet studied. Prairie dogs can alert one another, for example, that there is not just a human approaching their burrows, but a tall human wearing the color blue. Here is an article on this amazing research.
We headed for the Black Hills NF via the Needles Highway in Custer SP. The Needles Highway is about a 14-mile drive (with a speed limit of about 25 mph due to the curves and steepness) through forests and meadows highlighted by needle-like granite spires.
-The spectacular granite towers along the Needles Highway look like a miniature Patagonia skyline
-To get to these spectacular viewpoints you must drive through the Needles Eye Tunnel - not for everyone (or every vehicle) as it is only 8'0" wide and 9'9" high)
-Our campsite in the Black Hills NF had its own version of the Needles - a jagged rock wall spanning a ridge line
On our way into Badlands NP the next day we stopped at an overlook and saw a few Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. They were a fairly common sight on our first visit in 2020. We later learned (from a friend of Melissa's who had worked at the museum, but is now a seasonal ranger at Badlands NP) that there had been a precipitous drop in the sheep population due to a disease. Things are just beginning to finally turn around and some surviving ewes are giving birth.
-We didn't realize when we saw this young lamb that this was a very important birth in the park
Our last extended stay in Badlands NP was in late summer 2020. A major difference was that the landscape was then mainly brown, whereas this time, the prairie grasses were bright green providing a nice contrast to the rugged eroded landscape.
-The green of spring adds a nice contrast to the earth tones of the rugged hills and ravines of the park
-The name, Badlands , came from the Lakota people who called this region "mako sica" or "land bad." Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain led to this name.
We thought about camping in some of the BLM lands adjacent to the park, but the Lakota were right, this is a tough place and the temperatures were rising, so we headed for another favorite, the Sandhills of Nebraska. That will be part of the next post as we make it back home.
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