South Dakota, Part 1 - Loopy Wildlife, and a Presidential Preview [240506-08]

We spent the bulk of our time in South Dakota based out of Custer State Park, since it contained a number of sights to see of its own and was also centrally located to a couple other points of interest.  We actually ended up arriving a couple days ahead of schedule, since some of the activities of the previous days hadn't taken as long as allotted in the itinerary.

Custer State Park has turned out to be one of our favorite places on this Trek so far.  It rivals many national parks in both beauty and facilities (actually beating many national parks facility-wise) and would've been worth a trip out to visit all on its own.

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We left Crawford early Monday morning and meandered vaguely northward, crossing over into South Dakota just after 12:30 p.m.

Crossing the state line, the roads instantly smoothed out and the speed limit changed from 65 to 70 MPH.

As it turns out, the park license options for Custer State Park are either $20 for a 7 day pass, or $36 for a South Dakota Annual Pass.  Our early arrival had us staying in the park 8 nights instead of the originally planned 6, so it made it more cost effective to buy the annual pass than two 7 day ones and the T42 is now sporting a South Dakota SP annual pass sticker on its front windshield.  We haven't quite figured out why the expiration date is printed on the back of the sticker, since as far as we can tell it can only be read from the inside of the vehicle that way.  But if anyone was thinking of buying an annual pass:  we have a coupon for 1/2 off the purchase of another one now.

We arrived at the Visitor Center just before 2 p.m. to find another Travato already parked in the parking lot.  We ate lunch in the T42, and when we came out the owners of the other Travato came out to chat.  It was a very nice couple from L.A., on a 6 month trip to Nova Scotia.

In the Visitor Center we watched the 29 minute orientation movie in what has to be one of the most movie theater-like screening rooms of any park we've visited; they even got Kevin Costner to be the narrator for their film.

We got some information on hikes, as well as confirmation of what we'd been told at the entrance station about a herd of bison being spotted recently shortly down the Wildlife Loop, and browsed the various displays.

After a quick stop-in at the campground to check out the facilities, we decided to head down the Wildlife Loop Road to look for the bison.  First, we saw a herd of deer.

Then off in the distance, we spotted a small herd of pronghorn/antelope.

Then about 3 miles down the road, we found the herd of bison.  There were bison of varying sizes/ages grazing on one side of the road, and then crossing to the other side to get the to watering hole for a drink, and the crossing back again.

Arriving back at camp, we realized that we really hadn't needed to go looking for bison.  The bison came to us, grazing on the grassy area between the campground boundary and the road.

Snow was forecast overnight, so we plugged in to campground power for the first time the entire Trek and ran the heater in electric mode (to conserve our onboard propane) as we fell asleep to howling, buffeting winds.  Alas, it did not actually snow overnight - it only rained.

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Tuesday was:  Laundry Day!  After our morning routine, we headed over to the Creekside Lodge and used their one public washer/dryer pair to do a couple of loads, while using their wi-fi to work on the "Kansas, Part 3" blog post.  We found it a little odd that instead of having an actual laundry room, the machines were in a little alcove in the hallway; we felt sorry for the folks in the rooms across the hall if someone were to try to laundry at night, since the dryer motor was very unbalanced and made a constant thumping noise when running.

Once our clothes were all clean and tucked away again, we had lunch in the parking lot and then headed to the Lover's Leap Trailhead.  The four mile trail starts by meandering up into a wooded area, that had the wonderful woodsy smell we had been missing on all our previous hikes so far on this Trek.  We even passed through a patch of Ponderosa Pines that were giving off that wonderful vanilla/butterscotch scent that they sometimes do.

The guide says that from Lover's Leap you can see the Needles rock formations, and while that's technically true you really need binoculars of a good zoom lens to see anything worthwhile.  They're way off in the distance, at about the 11 o'clock position behind us in this photo.

Here's a closer look at what our "first view" of the Needles was.

On the return portion of the loop, the trail comes down and follows the creek, crossing back and forth over it several times.

While making dinner that night, the owner of a red Travato a few sites down responded to the invitation to drop by that we had sent out through a Travato Facebook Group post the night before by coming by for a visit.  The owners were a nice couple from Utah, who had just bought their '17 K from Georgia last September and were now on their second "big trip" in it.

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Wednesday's weather forecast called for some dicey weather conditions, so instead of trying to do any hikes we decided to do a "test run" to Mt. Rushmore, in preparation for our planned pre-sunrise visit.  Moreover, we opted to take the Iron Mountain Road there, since that road has some fairly small and narrow tunnels on it, to see if we'd have the nerve to try the Needles Highway later which has even narrower tunnels.  We made it through the first tunnel unscathed.

From the Peter Norbeck Overlook, we got our first glimpse of Mt. Rushmore in the distance.  (We also discovered in the highly sloped parking lot there, in a rather unfortunate way, that the T42's water pump doesn't like it when the van is pitched at an extreme angle and the tank is only 1/3 full.  Tom recognized the symptoms as an "airlock condition" (the pump basically sucked in air, and wouldn't take in water properly after that) but the "fix" requires a pressurized water source so our water system wouldn't pressurize properly for the rest of the day.)

Some of the later tunnels are designed to provide views of Mt. Rushmore as you drive through them.

The highway also has a number of rustic wooden "pigtail bridges", which serve as a creative/scenic way to deal with some of the roadway's elevation drops.

As we approached, the road provided views from angles different from the ones provided by the Visitor Center.

Arriving at the Visitor Center, we walked the Avenue of Flags down to the main observation deck to take the "classic" photo.

We went into the Visitor Center to watch the orientation film and browse the displays, which included information not only on the history of the monument itself, but on the four presidents featured and their place and significance in the timeline of American history.

Somewhat amusingly, among the various historical artifacts included in the display was a letter from someone in opposition to the idea of defacing the natural Mt. Rushmore with this needless sculpture.  On one end of the lobby is a photo of what Mt. Rushmore looked like originally.  Had we been around back then, we may very well have been writing letters of opposition to such a planned monstrosity as well...

We exited the Visitor Center to find that the clouds had closed in, and a steady drizzling rain was falling.  Since the presidents had all gone in for the day, we decided to save the Presidential Trail walk for our return visit and head back to the Park.

While the full Iron Mountain Road drive was fun, we decided to try an alternate, less winding route back.  Along the way, we saw several herds of deer and a few random bison so we figured the rain was bringing out the animals and it might be a good day to drive the full Wildlife Loop Road.  The bison herd was pretty much still at the same spot in the loop it had been the previous evening (and still quite happy to hold up traffic), and ended up being one of several herds spread throughout the loop.  Further down, we saw a small herd of elk:

and a small herd of wild burrows (apparently descendants of the burros originally brought into the Park to carry tourists to the top of Black Elk Peak):

We were delighted to see bunnies hopping by the side of the road at one point.

But the stars of the show (and they seemed to know it) were the prairie dogs.

Continuing on, we saw a few antelope by the side of the road:

And another herd of elk made a roadside appearance as well.

On the way back to camp, we stopped by a water spigot to clear our airlock issue and then planned out our trip up the Needles Highway for the next day - more on that in the next post.