Twin parks - sorta

The last two days we visited two parks right next door to each other. Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park. Combined they manage a couple thousand head of bison and occupy over 100,000 acres of woodland. Wind Cave however is enormous UNDER ground with over 167 MILES of passages! (we didn’t try for that tour)

Like all our other stops these required lots of driving. We visited each park to see their respective bison heards and we were not disappointed! We also saw a family of pronghorn antelope, coyote, a big family of turkeys, lots of boring old regular deer but we missed out on Custer State Park’s elk. We spoke with a ranger and he gave directions to the last known location of the heard… we drove an extra bunch of miles and never could track them down.

Custer State Park also home to the famous "Begging Burros." The park highly discourages feeding ANY of their animals but apparently turn a blind eye to families giving handouts to these guys. This heard of burros are the remnants of a pack animals used around the park over 100 years ago!

Tomorrow is the first of 3 long driving days! Just over 1000 miles to get back home.Read more