September 7, 2017 Custer, South Dakota

We went to two parks today. Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. Custer is beautiful with thick ponderosa forests, lakes and grasslands full on wildlife. Here are some buffalo by the road. And a road sign that says Buffalo are dangerous, do not approach.

 John standing in front of a buffalo hide. Buffalo can be up to 2000 lbs, they are BIG. We took the tour of Wind Cave. This is our guide Ranger Justin at the natural entrance to the cave. It has wind blowing out today, some days it blows in. The native american legend is that their ancestors came to this world through this hole.When it was first discovered it blew the hat off the first man to took into it. The next one it sucked his hat down. Depends on the barometric pressure.

I didn't get good photos inside the cave, too dark. It had very narrow passages. The main thing it is known for is it's boxwork formations. The first two photos are bad photos of them. Sorry, but there was also cave popcorn and glittery crystals too.  The road sign is one of the tight turns that goes over itself on a bridge. Called a pigtail bridge.

We drove back on the wildlife road in Custer park. We saw these antelope and white tailed deer.

Huge herds of buffalo. Custer park has over 1,000 buffalo and Wind Cave has around 400. We also saw this wild burro and baby, and a herd of more in the distance.

The porcupine was in the visitors center. I love the grab and go fast food on an exhibit for coyote's menus.  Lots of yellow flowers. We drove by Stockade lake to look at the campground for future reference.

September 3-6, 2017 Bighorn Mountains , Wyoming to Custer South Dakota

We decided to hike to the Medicine Wheel.  It is a sacred native american site that has been there for 100's of years.

You have to hike in 1.5 miles each way.  It is above tree line at 10,000 feet, past rugged rocks and part along a knife edge ridge. There were probably great views, but we could not tell because of the smoke from the fires out west.

This is from Medicine Mountain.  The smoke from the fires was really bad. The light was orange and there were no views and what you could see had a hazy look. This rendering of the wheel is on an informational sign. It has this quote " Eventually one gets to the medicine wheel to fulfil one's life.

The wheel is 80 feet in diameter. Native americans make pilgrimages here and leave offerings. It has a fence around it so non native americans can not enter it. They still have ceremonies here.  They had one as we left and they closed the site for an hour. The rock layers looked like brick walls on the way. A buffalo skull and some beaded offerings in the wheel. This aerial photo was form an informational sign.

This is a microburst blowdown, it blew all the trees down in this one area, pretty interesting. On the way back we stopped at Bear Lodge. There are a number of older log lodges with names like Arrow Head, Elks View. Bear Lodge had this Bud Lite banner over the bar that said Welcome 4 wheelers. There are tons of ATV trails in this area. A sign in the lodge said that All the Bears at Bear Lodge are Friendly.

The inside was all big logs, animal hides and mounted game animal heads. In the back the Wyoming fiddlers were playing. The music was great.

The smoke was really bad the next day too- the light was orange. A Wyoming trailer, orange light on the river, paintbrush and pretty grass.

Orange light on the trees, red fall leaves, lupine and the moon rising orange. Pretty wierd. Another old time looking log cabin.

 We are now in Sheridan at Peter D's RV park. Nice park, but the sites are pretty close together. On the plus side they have a great garden here and we got a free squash and a recipe for it. I did 5 loads of laundry. We had dinner in town, here is beautiful historic downtown Sheridan.

We started east.  Stopped first in Buffalo, Wyo. The Mishap brewery was not open, which was good, John won't drink anything while he is driving the bus. The horse tricycle is in the lobby of the historic Occidental Hotel,  which was wireless in 1880 and still wireless. Internet in all the rooms. The last three are murals that are on walls in Buffalo.  Street scene in beautiful, historic downtown Buffalo, the Occidental hotel, John shaking hands with Dick, who was born and raised in Buffalo, we had a nice chat with him and John advising the dog how to round up the sheep. 

The Sports Lure had everything you could ever possibly need, except bread and butter. I bought John some smartwool for his birthday there. John in the lobby of the Occidental hotel, and bar. Really cool historic hotel.

Then through Gillette. Some museums we need to see next time we stay there, the Rockpile and the Auto Museum. John topped off the fuel tank in Gillette. It needed 70 gallons, this is for half. It looks bad, but the generator and heat both use diesel from the tank too. Won't need to fill up again for at least 5-600 miles. We thought about staying in Gillette, but we were tired of hot and smokey, so we kept going through Newcastle, with the refinery and has been a tree city USA for the last 22 years. The oil tanks have go pokes and go doggies on the side. After that was Upton, the best town on earth.

We drove way longer than we usually do, 250 miles. We arrived in Custer, South Dakota. The Black Hills are beautiful through green grass and ponderosa pines on the rolling hills. It was wonderful to see views again and not hazy smoke.  Downtown Custer pretty touristy in a western kind of way in the  old historic buildings.  We are now camped at Fort Welikit. It is a commercial park, but has large sites with tons of trees and cool mountain air- no smoke smell, yet at least. My masterpiece is coming along. Getting close to done and coming out nice.

September 1-2, 2017 Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

We drove back to Shell Canyon to see what we didn't want to stop and see in the RV.

Shell Creek Falls. The visitors center was closed, but we were able to see this great falls. These cliffs were above us. The smoke from the fires was starting to obscure the views. 

Antelope Butte ski area. I took a bike ride across the river up south Tongue river valley. This is the campground from across the river.

Sunlight through the trees on the green, green grass. Lots of inholding older log cabins along the river. 

Evening light in the campground.

View of the Tongue River from the trail through camp.  John in our screen house having dinner.

The next day we decided to ride our bikes up the South Tongue River canyon trail. It is also an ATV Trail. Only 50 inches wide- there was even a gate only 50 inches wide. We figured we could take our bikes. John on an ATV ramp by a closed gate.

John with his new mountain bike he got before we left. His old one wore out, mostly from riding around the country on the back of the car. After a couple miles the trail got more rugged, the stuff we used to ride in the old days and got beat up on, so we came back.

After biking we check out Sibley Lake down the road. The dam was built by the CCC. We put the boats on the lake and paddled around it. John walked in the morning too, we figure he did a triathlon!

Beautiful little lake. At the boat ramp were families swimming, kids catching frogs, people on floaty things. Not too crowded for the busiest weekend of the year.