Custer State Park

After leaving Mt. Rushmore, we headed south on Iron Mountain Road towards Custer State Park.  Iron Mountain Road is a curvy, narrow road...

 

with several tunnels narrow tunnels.

There were several places where you could look back and see Mt. Rushmore...

...and awesome views of the Black Hills.

We had noticed when we drove into Hill City that many of the evergreen trees had turned brown on the hillside.  Unfortunately, pine beetles have infested much of the forests in the Black Hills and are killing the Ponderosa Pines.  One of the ways the Forest Service is attempting to stop the spread of the pine beetles is to cut down the dead trees and thin out the forests.

 

We turned off of Iron Mountain Road onto the Wildlife Loop Road in Custer State Park hoping to see A LOT of wildlife.

We saw a pronghorn antelope...

 

...and a buffalo...

...but mainly what we saw was open ranges. 

 

With as much as 1,400 buffalo in the park at any given time during the year, we kept thinking we might see a herd of buffalo coming over the hill at any point.

 

We even started singing "Home on the Range" hoping to find "where the buffalo roam."  But all we saw were pronghorn antelope...

 

...more hills...

 

...and more pronghorn...

 

...and then some donkeys...

...that fully expected to be fed by the visitors in the passing cars.

"Sorry, Bud, I don't have any carrots for you!"

 

As we traveled further along the Wildlife Loop Road, we saw a few more buffalo...

 

 

 

...but no herds.  While the views were beautiful, we were a little disappointed we didn't see any buffalo herds. 

We did see this very unusual motorcycle/car/thingamadugie.

Oh well!  Maybe we'll see some more buffalo when we get to Yellowstone!