South Dakota Part II

On Wednesday, July 15, we hiked the Spring Creek and Flume Trail in the Black Hills. It was a nice shaded trail that follows a lake and crosses Spring Creek multiple times. You hike over rocks that are from a fallen flume - a stone chute used to route water when mining was active.
Thursday we drove through Custer State Park looking for wildlife; we saw proghorn antelope and burrows but no bison or bighorn sheep. 😔 Although the park is located in the Black Hills the terrain is mostly rolling prairie. Bison were once extinct from the area but there is a healthy conservation effort to bring them back. While at the Black Elk we enjoyed local beer and wine in the Taproom and fabulous waffles in the morning! We also visited Cohort Brewery where I had a good lemon flavored beer.
We moved to Wall, SD on Thursday, July 17th located near The Badlands and famous for Wall Drugs. Wall Drugs was started in 1931 and struggled for the first 5 years due to the remoteness of the town. The family, the Hustead’s, were about to give up when Dorothy Hustead (wife) had a brilliant idea to offer free ice water to thirsty travelers driving on the hot dusty highway in 1936. They put up multiple signs on the highway to stop in Wall for a cool cup of water and had immediate success. The store is now a block long and full of merchandise from western wear to souvenirs. The store is still owned by the Hustead family and still offers free ice water plus 5 cent coffee (or so it’s still advertised). On Friday we hiked Notched Trail in the Badlands. It was a cool hike that went through rock canyons and required climbing over rocks and down a wooden ladder. We then drove through the park and stopped at various lookout points. On our last night we ate dinner at Salty Steer and had a good steak dinner.Read more