We left the campground, and drove into Custer State Park, a beautiful park just a few miles from our campground. We drove the wildlife loop, which goes out onto luscious, rolling, green prairie hills - just gorgeous.
We saw a herd of buffalo, and also encountered the friendly, hungry wild burros that live in the park. You're not supposed to feed them, but... at one point I was pinned up against the van by three burros and was unsure of how to escape! It was crazy. The kids thought this was simply fantastic!
We all had a late lunch/early dinner together in Hot Springs, and then our friends headed for home. We Howells had decided to visit the Mammoth Site outside of Hot Springs, a real sink hole that trapped something like 125 Columbian and Woolly Mammoths thousands of years ago. The site is privately owned and is an active archeological/paleontological site; a building has been built around almost the entire sight, and you can tour the site and go right along the edge of the sink hole, seeing tons of mammoth bones everywhere. It's pretty fascinating. There is also an exhibit hall and small children's play area. This was the one activity I thought was a bit overpriced, but it was interesting nonetheless and the kids had been begging to go; fortunately, they loved it-
The tour has four stops where we listened to the guide via phones, I'm sure as to keep down noise level, and Mason was a hoot on this. He starts talking back to the guide, telling him about having pizza for dinner recently, and then when the tour guide started a sentence with "now what we have here is..." and Mason finished his sentence with, "now what we have here is a lot of fossils!" He is a riot. When he's not being an extremely infuriating stinker. He seriously spend the half the trip making me crack up and swoon over his cuteness, and half of the trick making me wish we have left him at home. Such are the joys of a three-year-old.
After Hot Springs, Brian presented me with a different route home, that was the shortest distance yet seemed the most adventurous. He didn't have to say "adventure" twice for me to get on board! So we headed south from Hot Springs toward the SD/Nebraska border, which was remote and desolate and beautiful and wild and fascinating. We drove through the Buffalo Gap National Grassland in SD, and the Ogalala National Grassland in Nebraska. Brian figured in about a 115-mile part of the drive, we saw between 12 and 15 cars. There were hardly any signs of life on this drive; we even drove through a modern day ghost town - Ardmore SD - that had been featured in National Geographic Magazine in 2004. It was seriously so cool. I wish we had known and explored it more, but
we had no cell service there and didn't learn this until after we were
home.
We drove down dirt roads that spilled across the prairie, which I found to be beautiful prairie land, very lush and green, filled with prairie wildflowers and blowing in the wind. On one 36-mile stretch we encountered only one other vehicle and saw no houses, abandoned or otherwise. Loved, loved, loved it. The kids were tired out from the trip and late nights/early mornings, and were content to watch movies quietly and overall it was such a memorable, peaceful drive. Brian and I were enthralled with the desolation and loveliness. At times buttes would arise, or forested hilly areas, and then they would fade back into the endless prairie. The prairie lost its intense green and lushness and we got back into Wyoming and and northern Colorado, but then it was nice to see the stunning Rockies again. This is such a beautiful country.
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