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Exploring Lake Vermilion
Lake Vermilion State Recreation Area, SD, August 2025 Lake Vermillion is named after the Vermillion River. Vermillion is an alternate spelling of Vermilion, the reddish-orange color. The river gets its name from the seams of reddish-orange sandstone along the banks. People just lack imagination. At least, it is not the reddish-orange river. Yesterday, we had…
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Hike The Otter Stream Trail, Not This One
Lake Vermillion State Recreation Area, SD, July 2025 Lake Vermillion State Recreation Area has a figure 8 hiking trail in the western camping area that circles the Maple Campground and passes near Juniper and Oak Campground. The trail is flat smooth and wide. It appears to be a mowed path through the prairie about 4…
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Can I Burro a Bag of Salad?
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Badlands National Park
Interior, SD, July 2025 Kate put together a plan to do everything within about 100 miles, except John ruined her plan by pointing out that her route bypassed most of the Badlands National Park. The revised plan skipped the extra grasslands visitor center, and passed through the badlands. This plan involved going to the Minuteman…
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Wind Cave Canyon Hiking Trail
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Not Quite 20,000 Leagues Under the Ground
Wind Cave National Monument, SD, July 2025 It was closer to 500 feet. Actually, we have no idea on the length of a league. If a league is .025 feet, maybe it was 20,000 leagues. Probably not. We pre-purchased tickets for cave tours at Wind Cave National Monument. Originally, we planned for one at Wind…
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Barnes Canyon Trail
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Night in the Park: Part 2
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Fisherman Flats Road
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 On the first day, Kate talked to a park ranger at the Custer State Park visitor center for what seemed like hours. (In reality, it was probably five minutes.) She learned that there should be Green Woodpeckers in the snags at the Fisherman Flats. Translating that to English, there…
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BOOF Pictures
Garryowen, MT, July 2025 If you read about wildlife photography, you might run into the acronym BIF, and you might see that it is the “Holy Grail” of wildlife photography. BIF stands for “Birds in Flight”. It is a difficult, aggravating, and time consuming form of wildlife photography. If often requires a great deal of…