Custer State Park, SD - Day 4

A furry hiker? NO! It's a bison!
see all photos »

Upon arriving at Custer State Park, we were greeted by a cool ranger who helped us out a lot figure out a game plan. I’ll back up by saying that we weren’t sold on staying at the park, we’d had lots of choices, and we just weren’t sure. But she was awesome and after talking to her we were pretty sure this was a good place to make camp for two nights. The roads were very windy and the scenery was so gorgeous you had to slow down. On the drive to our camp site (which took at least 30 min) we rounded a corner and almost ran smack into a giant buffalo on the side of the road. It was MASSIVE, and beautiful. We both thought it was hiker at first…a big furry hiker as we got closer…and then we were both like HOLY SHIT! We didn’t know what to do, especially since all the signs said DO NOT APPROACH THE BISON – THEY ARE DANGEROUS! So Josh pulled up along side and I rolled down the window and the bison (btw bison and buffalo can be used interchangeably) blinked at me. I snapped a few shots which came out ok cause Josh wasn’t exactly keen on stopping all together, seeing as the bison was literally two or three feet from my head. We drove off laughing excitedly. We saw three more on the way to our campsite. It was amazing. We were soooo glad we’d changed plans and gone to the park and decided the next day we needed to be sure to spend more time hiking close to the park than we had originally intended.

Up close and personal
see all photos »

Our camp site was nice too – very quite, near a stream, a fair amount of people and families. We actually got to set up camp before it got dark. IT was confusing though, because we kept changing time zones. One second our cell phones would say it was central time, the next it was Mountain Time. Our internal clocks are pretty messed up (it’s 6:30am right now, but my body thinks from yesterday its 7:30, and from two days ago that it’s 8:30). Josh went back to the general store to get firewood while Dove tried to put on the rain fly and make dinner. Fortunately Dove figured it out because before Josh got back it started to rain. Equally fortunate again is this amazing tent! We fit all our supplies in here along with us and our air mattress, and outside there is a covered vestibule for things where the bottom can get wet to be stashed too. When Josh got back, he was a little surprised to see the entire campsite now in the rain proof tent. Of course this meant that dinner consisted of sandwiches again. The rain let up for a while, but then a great lightening storm started and we both fell asleep to the pelting rain. This was easily the coolest day of our trip so far, and tomorrow promises to be even better!