We woke up this morning, left the Boys at the trailer :( and headed to Wind Cave National Park. We took the Wildlife Loop Road and Roads 5 and 6 into the park (Custer State Park borders Wind Cave).
We saw more wildlife...
"Put 'em up, put 'em up, I say"
...and then we were accosted by a herd of buffalo. As soon as they saw us coming, they walked into the road...who's going to mess with this guy??!...
...and prevented us from journeying on.
They then proceeded to surround the truck...
...and lick it like it was a blueberry lollipop.
It was crazy. And funny. And disturbing. And slightly scary...especially when they started using the truck as their personal chin and back scratchers...
Needless to say, when a 2000 pound buffalo wants to use your truck to scratch his butt, well, it shakes you around a bit.
It was especially intimidating when the big bull decided he wanted in on the lick fest. We were hoping he couldn't read...
...we didn't want him to get any ideas.
It was the worst car wash we've ever gotten. But, it was free, and maybe that's how they do things in South Dakota. :)
We continued our drive to the visitor center/cave entrance. The dirt road finally ended and dumped us out on the main road through the park. A lot of the trails were closed due to a prescribed burn.
The cave was pretty cool. We thought that if you've seen one cavern, you've seen them all. We were wrong. Google "Wind Cave Boxwork" if you're bored. Wind Cave has something like 95% of all the boxwork cave formations in the world. It's also the fourth longest cave system in the world and they believe that what has been discovered so far is only about 10% of the entire system.
Not to mention that I've never been to a cavern where there is a steady gust of wind that blows out of the natural entrance. I was entertained by this for longer than I care to admit. :P
After our visit to Wind Cave, we headed into Custer to have a late lunch/early dinner (we've not done so well at eating regularly or at prescribed times. Three square meals a day? Uhhhh...). I got something really nasty and was certain I'd pay for it later. Mmmmm...tasty.
As we were driving through town, we noticed a bunch of kids dressed up in costumes. The hopping city of Custer has a webcam and a city wide sound system. "Halloween Music" was pouring from the speakers (The Addams Family theme song, the Monster Mash, etc.) and a live DJ was watching folks on the webcams and calling them out for not doing the Mash. ;) The town puts on a trick or treat deal for the kids and shop owners participate. We weren't strapped for time, so we pulled over and watched folks go by.
Here are a few of my personal favorites...
We left the trick or treaters behind and headed back to the campground. Along the way, we ran into these ladies...
Little did we know that we would have an encounter with them in a couple of hours.
The Boys were happy we were back and anxious to go for a walk so we snapped on their leads and walked them from the campground, past the visitor center, and up to the lodge. There was an evening hike program that the park was sponsoring and dozens of jack o lanterns were set along the hiking path to light the way. As we attempted to cross the parking lot, the group of ewes that we saw earlier ganged up on us. Literally. They lifted their heads in unison, and the big female started walking towards us - with a very intent look in her eyes and a serious purpose to her gait. Uhhh....the rest of the sheep followed. It was like the Borg. Once the attention was turned on us, they were relentless. We had stopped walking when they popped their heads up and then started to walk backwards when they began to head our way. We did a full blown turn-and-walk-away as quickly as possible once they started to pursue us. The Boys were confused and we were kind of freaked out. It was like an old school MTV music video - Pat Benetar's Love Is A Battlefield or Michael Jackson's Thriller. I wish I had been carrying the camera to capture it. It was weird. Funny. Kinda creepy. Entertaining. But weird.
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