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Palisades State Park
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Waterfowl Game Production Area
Lake Vermillion Recreation Area, SD, August 2025 South Dakota has a lot of “Waterfowl Production Areas” that are managed by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department. The website indicates that the Production areas have hiking. Based on what we saw, you can hike in the areas but there are no designated trails. I…
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A Stroll Along Lake Vermillion
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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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Smokey Bear
Lake Vermillion Recreation Area, SD, July 2025 When we were in Custer State Park which is surrounded by National Forest, we stopped on the National Black Hills Forest Supervisors office which had a small store and of course cancel stamps :-). At the store, we purchased a miniature (I mean really tiny) lego kit of…
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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…