After our brief exploration of the Badlands, we stopped in to the Black Hills. We stayed 11 days at Blue Bell Campground in Custer State Park – a lovely campground! We had power at our site, but water was central – and they had a nice shower house.
Over the next week or so, we set out to hike and explore some of Custer State Park. The best hike we did was up Elk Peak. This was a pretty unique hike, with an old fire tower built on to the top. The views were spectacular – it would be pretty sweet spending a season on duty there. Of course, it isn’t staffed anymore.
We also took a trip down to Wind Cave National Park, only 30 minutes from us. We took a tour, and to our surprise they allowed cameras! I did my best to capture some of the features, but since it’s a cave – it was mostly dark 🙂
Of course, no trip to the Black Hills area would be complete without a bison run-in. We only saw them south of Custer – once on our way to Wind Cave National Park, and then again when we were leaving (south). There were easily hundreds in this herd – and they didn’t really care to stay off the road. No matter, we weren’t in a hurry and it gave us some up close viewing.
The rest of the time was spent kayaking, hiking, and a little bit of biking. Custer was a beautiful place, but it isn’t really “designed” for the avid hiker/biker. If you are into horses, this would be a fantastic place to visit – it seems many of the park trails are very frequently ridden. However, the trails are much less fun for humans when they are covered in horse prints and poo.
After our two weeks in South Dakota, we were ready to get on to some bigger mountains. We left Custer on our way to Breckenridge, CO – to be continued in our next post.
-Kyle