High Tide And Green Grass

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Great National Grasslands Boondocking Spot - Wall Drug - Badlands National Park

We moved from Elk Mountain to a boondocking spot near Wall, SD. This is a great spot, probably the best boondocking spot we have had. It is on Buffalo Gap National Grasslands land and overlooks the north edge of Badlands National Park (we are within sight of the entrance to the National Park). We are on a bluff overlooking the South Dakota Badlands a couple hundred feet below.

Our Route

Our Site - no one real close - also, our new solar panels - we have four 100 watt panels on the roof and just added two more 100 watt panels that we can position on the ground - they are working out great

View from the window of the camper

Wall Drug

Wall Drug is a famous tourist stop in Wall, South Dakota - it is somewhat like "South Of The Border" in South Carolina with frequent billboards on the Interstate for 100 miles before you get there. It is mainly a tourist trap with an enormous gift shop, several places to eat and a few other shops.

They have a few animatronic displays that were built in the 50's and are still working

Donna with a Don Imus look alike

This animatronic display was quite good - they even kept time to the music

The obligatory jackalope

Badlands National Park

Several Views Of The Park

A heard of mule deer around a watering hole

Big Horn Sheep On A Steep Cliff - these were all females and lambs - didn't see any rams with the big horns

Mother and lamb

Same mother and lamb

A few buffalo at prairie dog town - if you look close you can see 3 prairie dogs in the foreground. We found out that the buffalo prefer to graze around prairie dog towns because the grass has more nutrients in it - we looked for this and it was pretty consistent that when you saw buffalo, there were prairie dogs nearby

Buffalo Close-ups

Monday, May 28, 2018

Mount Rushmore - Black Hills - Custer State Park

Monday we moved from Platte River RV Park in Wyoming to Elk Mountain Campground in The Black Hills near Hot Springs, South Dakota. Elk Mountain is a National Park campground with no services (no electric/water at camp sites and almost no cell phone coverage - no internet). We spent a week here as there was a lot to see and we wanted to stay put over the Memorial Day weekend as it is hard to find campgrounds with availability on holiday weekends.

Our Route

Our Campsite - all of the campsites were just pull-offs beside the road

Campground

Double rainbow the first night

Mount Rushmore

We thoroughly enjoyed Mount /Rushmore which wasn't too far from the campground

The entrance to Mount Rushmore

Bronze sculpture done by Lincoln Borglum as a tribute to his father, Gutzon Borglum who created Mount Rushmore (Lincoln completed it after the death of his father)

View from the base

Close-up

View through a crevice in a cave on the trail to the base of the monument

Another view from the trail

This is the view from the end of the trail

View of George Washington from the road leading to Mount Rushmore

Crazy Horse

About 20 miles down the road is the Crazy Horse Monument that has been in the works since its conception in the late 1930's. This is a privately funded work that is yet to be completed

Crazy Horse - Note the painted outline of the horses head on the right

This is the artists conception of the completed sculpture

Close-up of Crazy Horse

Custer State Park

We took the 18 mile scenic wildlife drive through Custer State Park which is just a few miles from the campground - lots of prairie dogs

Mother and pup

Heard of wild buffalo grazing

Huge bull buffalo

There was always a flock of birds around the buffalo

Bird getting a free ride across the road

Lots of pronghorns (American antelope)

Wild burro - burros were used on tours of nearby mountains up until the 60's - when this business folded they let the burros go wild and there is a significant population of wild burros and mules in the park

This one looks more like a horse so it is likely a mule

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Terry Bison Ranch - Cheyenne, Wyoming and Change Of Plans

Since leaving the Great Sand Dunes National Park area we have been moving pretty fast only staying a couple days at each spot so I have gotten a little behind on the blog. We left the BLM land near Great Sand Dunes NP and moved to Arkansas Point State Park in Pueblo, Colorado where we stayed for a couple days. This was a nice park on a large lake. From there we moved to Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont, CO for a couple days. From there we moved to the Terry Bison Ranch which is just over the Colorado/Wyoming border near Cheyenne, WY. This is a huge working bison ranch with over 27,000 acres and over 1000 head of bison, lots of horses and assorted farm animals and a few more exotic animals - a great place to camp for a few days. We then moved on to Platte River Campground in Glenrock, WY where we have been for about a week taking a break from traveling which gave us time to get mail and some packages sent to us. While here we upgraded the solar on the RV. We added two more solar panels which required upgrading our solar controller to handle the extra panels and replacing some of the wiring to handle the extra current.

We were heading to Yellowstone to beat the summer rush but we have to go to Sioux Falls, SD to take care of some personal business so we will try to go to Yellowstone in the fall after the summer rush. On the way to Sioux Falls we plan to go to Mount Rushmore, The Black Hills and The Badlands which are all in Southwest South Dakota and somewhat on our way to Sioux Falls.

Our route over the last 12 days or so