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Can I Burro a Bag of Salad?
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 The Burros are descendants of the ones used to haul visitors up to the top of Black Elk Peak before the tours were discontinued in the 1930s. They are not native to the Black Hills of South Dakota. We had driven by the place the Burros hung out a…
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Gordon Stockade & Gold Panning
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 We spent the morning completing chores around the trailer, making calls, etc. In the afternoon, we went gold rushing. The park naturalists offer a wide variety of free programs that anyone can attend – animals talks, nature walks, archery, gold panning, etc. The 2 pm event at the Gordon…
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Barnes Canyon Trail
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 We needed to get some exercise, so we decided to go hiking. Since all the places that we wanted to hike had rattlesnakes or poison ivy, we decided to hike on Barnes Canyon Trail. Since we could not decide which direction to hike from, Kate picked “B”, and we…
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Night in the Park: Part 2
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 It was foggy much of the day, but it cleared up in the early evening. We decided to look for nocturnal wildlife again on the wildlife loop. On the drive, we were almost hit by a Common Nighthawk. It was close to where we saw on the last time.…
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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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The Glamorous Night Life of State Parks
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 See the glamorous night life of Custer State Park in Blur-o-Vision (patent pending)! Kate and John sat through an hour long park presentation about nocturnal animals. It was definitely geared towards kids, and the yammering and squalling kids made it hard to hear the presentation. Mostly, we learned that…
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Needles Highway and Custer
Custer State Park & Custer City, SD, July 2025 Today started out with John inspecting the roof for potential tree damage. John wanted to do this before the upcoming rainfall since a small portion of the roof was scraped by trees when we were backing into the site. Fortunately, the roof looked good and did…
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Wildlife Visitor Center Custer State Park
Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 John would tell you that I have an obsession with 2 things. Post cards and cancel stamps. I did not collect my cancel stamp when we went to the visitor center at the entrance of the park because I was out of cancel stamp pages in my book. At…