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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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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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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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Jewel Cave National Monument & Canyon Hike
Jewel Cave National Monument, SD, July 2025 There are 3 national monuments within an hour of Custer State Park. The monuments are Jewel Cave National Monument, Wind Cave National Monument and Mount Rushmore National Monument. Jewel Cave has a .25 mile, 3.5 mile, and 5.5 mile hike near it. The .25 miles hike starts and…
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Bighorn National Forest (North)
Burgess Junction, WY, July 2025 We stayed at Garryowen, MT because Kate wanted to drive the Northern Route through Bighorn National Forest on Route 14. Route 14 through the forest is almost 60 miles south of Garryowen and about 35 miles long. In total, it is about 2 hours of driving, each way, due to…
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Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
Garryowen, MT, July 2025 So we are staying in the middle of nowhere, Montana near a (small? tiny? puny?) private town name Garryowen. Wikipedia and the 2010 Census claim that the population is 2. The building in town is a combination of the city hall, museum, and convenience store. We have not been there, so…
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Relaxing during the Heat Wave
7th Ranch RV Camp, MT, July 2025 When we were Yellowstone, the hottest day was maybe 80 F and that was probably only 1 day. Most nights were in the 30s or less. We did have a few in the 40s. Ever since then, the temperature has been a minimum of 80s during the day…
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Yellowstone National Park Day 35: Part 4
Yellowstone National Park, WY, June 2025 (If you want to skip the sad camera lament, feel free to skip to the pictures.) Rant This is the tale of the third trip out. This trip was not a complete disaster, but the pictures from the Canon EOS R7 are less often properly focused than the Canon…
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Yellowstone National Park Day 30
Yellowstone National Park, WY, June 2025 We found out that the Natural Bridge Trail was open. They close it in the spring because Bridge Creek has spawning trout that attract bears. Sadly, this means that we missed the spawning trout. We used the trail at Bridge Bay Campground. The trail starts as packed dirt, but…
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Yellowstone National Park Day 29
Yellowstone National Park, MT & WY, June 2025 Nez Perce Picnic Area A couple days ago we went to Nez Perce Picnic Area and saw a Great Blue Heron nest in the far distance. Today, we decided to use a pull off that was closer to the trees in which we saw the nest. (John…