Back in South Dakota

 This weekend I have a workshop in South Dakota, so, when Trish and I finished at the Athens, Alabama, Festival, we drove out to Custer to rest and enjoy the scenery for the days in between.

We are in a little cabin just outside town where we have our own kitchen and laundry.  We don’t have to go out to eat and we can get everything clean for the next part of this trip.  We can also sleep as late as we wish.

Today we took a ride around the Wildlife Loop at nearby Custer State Park.  We got our money’s worth in animals!  We saw 36 deer, 40 big horn sheep, 11 wild burros, 14 wild turkeys, many hundreds of bison, thousands of prairie dogs, five buzzards, a coyote, and one chipmunk!  The animals were out in great numbers everywhere.

This is a good time to be here.  When we were here in August, they told us that the big horn sheep stayed way back in the mountains.  Now they had taken over an empty campground and were grazing happily.

In August the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally had scared the bison into the back country. Today there were dozens of separate family units scattered through the park.  We drove right up to many and others blocked the road for us!  They are taking on their winter coats.

It was a beautiful day for a ride and there were almost no other vehicles on the loop.  We love being able to visit places like this after the busy tourist season is over.