Touring the Wild, Wild West

Close encounters of the worst kind!

(If you're not using, as I was, a telephoto lens.)

Fuji X-T20, Fujinon XC 50-230mm f4.8-6.3 OIS lens

Custer State Park, South Dakota

From Badlands National Park to the town of Custer, South Dakota was an easy, 100-mile drive, taking Interstate 90 to Rapid City and then State Highways 16 and 385. We parked the trailer at Buffalo Ridge Campground, just outside Custer -- one of our favorites of all the campgrounds we've visited in our travels.

There's lots to see around Custer. Probably Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills is best known, but there's also Custer State Park, which has the largest population of buffalo (bison) in the U.S., Wind Cave National Park, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and numerous other state parks and recreation areas which we did not visit.

After settling in at our campsite, we went into Custer to do some shopping and had a good supper at a restaurant, the name of which I now, unfortunately, can't remember.

Part of the buffalo herd at Custer State Park

Fuji X-T1, Fujinon XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OISII lens

The next day, we went to Custer State Park. Covering 71,000 acres in the Black Hills, it's one of the largest state parks in the U.S. and is home to 1,500 buffalo. (I know they're bison, but I grew up on "buffalo" and just can't get my mind around Bison Bill.) 

An antelope family in the park.

Fuji X-T20, Fujinon XC 50-230mm f4.8-6.3 OIS lens

We drove the 18-mile Wildlife Loop Road and saw antelope and buffalo -- plenty of buffalo. Maybe not the whole 1500, but a lot of buffalo, nonetheless. They were all over the road, with cars stacked up both ways. No one was in a hurry to get through, of course, because that was what we had all come to see. I do think, though, that if I had been one of the people on motorcycles I would have been a bit nervous.

The buffalo appear to think they own the park.

Fuji X-T20, Fujinon XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OISII lens

 

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(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone