South Dakota, Part 4 - Mother's Day, Animal Surprises, and Mountain Thunder [240512-13]

Although we had been in Custer State Park for close to a week, the park had a couple more animal surprises in store for us for our final two days there - and some additional areas to explore still, too.

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Despite our rather long day on Saturday, we ended up getting up early Sunday morning and taking care of sundry housekeeping items (cleaning the bathroom, putting the roof cargo that had unnecessarily been taken down for the Needles Highway adventure back up on the roof, and most importantly:  Christine gave Tom a haircut).  We also discovered that there were actually prairie dogs living in the lawn of the campground.

Being Mother's Day, our plan for the day was to partake of the Mother's Day Brunch at the Game Lodge Restaurant, which we had seen the signs for when dining there Friday evening.  The lobby was quite packed with people when we arrived around 11:30, but we got seated right away at a little table for two by the bar - we guess it pays to be a party of two, and not a large group, on a day like this.  The restaurant itself was pretty full the entire time we were there, and it became apparent that the Lodge - far more accustomed to providing a fine dining experience than a buffet - had underestimated the demand a bit.  They had a bit of trouble keeping the hot items stocked, and at times they overcooked the food (the salmon in particular) in their effort to keep up with demand.  Tom was particularly glad that we hadn't arrived later, since the "Assorted Cheese Display" started out with a fine assortment of fancy soft and hard cheeses, but by the time we left had been replaced by cubes of supermarket block cheese.  We also wish that they had cut the dessert cakes smaller (they were all full 4 square inch, restaurant sized slices instead of the much smaller ones you'd normally find on a buffet - and which are much more conducive to being able to sample a wide variety).  Overall the food was good, though, and we ate far more than we probably should have.

After brunch, we were both feeling the need to walk off some calories so decided to take the Creekside Trail for the 3 mile roundtrip down to the Grace Coolidge Campground and back.  We passed a field of bison, the General Store, and a nice little mini "waterfall".

While we were out, some of the bison in the field had apparently gotten bored and decided to get up and mill around both sides of the walking path back - so we ended up having to cross the road and make a wide arc around using the lawn across the way.

We spent the rest of the day parked outside the Creekside Lodge, using the wi-fi.

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Our plan for Monday was to head over to Stockade Lake to hike the trail there.  On the way, we passed by - or more accurately, through, since some were in the process of crossing the road - a herd of mountain goats.

The skies were practically clear when we arrived at the lake, and it was hard to believe that the forecast was for rain later in the afternoon.

Looking at the map at the trailhead, we were a little surprised to find that the 1.5 mile Stockade Loop Trail doesn't actually go around the lake; it only starts from the lake and climbs up around one of the ridges behind it.  But all indications were that there were supposed to be views of the Crazy Horse Memorial, the Needles, and Black Elk Peak from the trail's Scenic Overlook so we headed up the trail into the forest.  As we crested the high point of the trail and continued walking for a long time down and around without seeing an overlook, we started getting suspicious that we had somehow missed it.  Neither Google nor Apple Maps were useful for telling exactly where on the trail we were, but we were able to pull the trail up on our AllTrails app and compare our location there against the photo of the map we had taken at the trailhead showing approximately where the overlook was supposed to be.  After walking back and forth over the same section of trail multiple times, we finally figured out where the "overlook" was:  merely a section of trail with no signs indicating it was the overlook, but a bench on one side (not the only bench on the trail, so there was no special significance to its presence the first few times we passed by it).  The named sights, of course, were really only visible with binoculars or a good zoom lens; they're marked (in order) with the three red arrows in the first image below.

The view of the Crazy Horse Memorial was particularly interesting, since it showed him looking directly at us, instead of the usual profile view we were used to seeing by now.

The clouds had been steadily rolling in during our hike, and our plans to make lunch and take it to the covered picnic table by the lake were curtailed by the sudden thunderstorm that broke out while we were preparing our food; we ate inside the T42 instead.  Since the trail hadn't gone around the lake, we decided to drive the road around the lake after lunch, eventually crossing over the wooden Stockade Lake Bridge at the end by the dam.

We tried to get some video of the lightening, but in the end only managed to capture the thunder.

The road came out on the highway next to a replica of the lake's namesake: the Gordon Stockade.  The original small fort was built in 1874 by a band of prospectors who illegally entered the Black Hills (at the time part of a Sioux reservation, under the Fort Laramie Treaty) looking for gold.

We spent most of the rest of the day at the Creekside Lodge again, doing another load of laundry and using the wi-fi to complete and post the "Nebraska, Part 1" blog.

Although we had had a grand time the past eight days in the Custer area, tomorrow we'd be leaving Custer State Park for good, headed for our next adventure.