dakota road trip, day 6

this was custer state park day. all day. it's a big state park in south dakota, entirely contained within the black hills, and it is beautiful. the trees, the rolling green fields, the exposed granite spires, the big blue sky, and all those bison. we started the day with the rest of the wildlife road loop that skipped the prior day, and we were not disappointed in our quest for bison.


a whole herd crossed the road in front our our car, while the big male and female stood guard in the middle of the road. a few young males came to check out the grill of the subaru.
here he comes...


and then he met a friend at the front of the car...


all while these two kept an eye on the crossing.


these two also kept a pretty close eye on the crossing.

custer state park is also home to some feral burros. i recall a road trip to custer in high school with a friend--those burros stick their head right into your car to beg for food. my friend jenny and i fed one burro an entire box of crackers back in 1995. that probably wasn't a good idea, and i can see that now. however, i still wanted to see those burros. alas, the only sighting we had was a handful of little donkey-looking friends hanging out in the shade in the distance. no one wanted crackers.

so we continued on to the blue bell lodge in the park (you guys, the lodges in this park. so many. so beautiful.) blue bell is home to the riding stables, and the kids took a 10 minute ride with a small horse on a lead rope. we didn't sign up for the hour long trail ride, but OH, we SHOULD have. they loved it, didn't want to get off their horses, and absolutely could have done it physically for an hour. i am still not sold that james' attention span would have held him safely on a horse for an hour, but... i don't know. i think he could do it. NEXT TIME.





i mean, anyone who knows me knows what kind of a heavenly moment this was. horses are the best.


and when the riding was over, we headed back home to our lodge. we stayed in the sylvan lake lodge, beautifully perched up on a granite mountain overlooking a very pretty (man-made reservoir) lake.


we had some lunch at the beach, then played at the beach. after we had enough swimming in the freezing cold mountain water (and napping in the bright sunshine--that was me), we climbed on some big rocks and took the path walk around the lake.

look closely in the shadows of the near side of that big rock in the water--david and ramona swam out there.


and that walk around the lake--just beeeeautiful.





and then, one last fancy al fresco bison burger and elk ravioli dinner in the mountains, at the lovely sylvan lake lodge.

look for the kids--that's the view of our room from the dinner table. pretty nice.