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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?
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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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
Wind Cave National Monument, SD, July 2025 We needed to test the time to get to Wind Cave National Monument to make sure we would leave in time for our cave tours next week. To do this, we planned a trip down to Wind Cave to go hiking. Based on what Kate read, the Wind…
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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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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…