Roving Cooks

May 23-31: Custer, SD –the Black Hills.

We spent the week in the beautiful Black Hills area of South Dakota (Madelyn says they are really the Green Hills). Starting to get into summer camping season, the Buffalo Ridge Camp Resort was spacious early in the week and completely full by Memorial Day weekend. Grayson and Madelyn made friends with the neighbors-for-a-few-days kids and enjoyed comparing favorite sticks, collecting “gemstones”, and racing loops around the RVs. The weather was mild most days, and Greg found a city park on a hill to work from (nice view, short bike ride, and 5G – what more could a man want?).

Early in the week, we scoped out Wind Cave National Park. We needed tickets to get into the cave and opted to save that for the weekend with Daddy, but the Visitor Center had a small exhibit with an interesting (to me) history of white man’s discovery of the caves and fun (to the kids) light up board showing how the barometric cave “breathes”. The highlight certainly was parking on the roadside to watch prairie dogs and seeing a coyote on the hunt cross the field. The coyote came close enough that I thought watching from the truck would be prudent.

The cave tour involved me going to the Visitor Center around 6:45am Saturday, hanging out in line until they opened at 8:00, and getting tickets for the afternoon. It was a rough time of watching deer wander across the parking lot and listening to a full adult podcast by myself, followed by picking up donuts for breakfast. The cave tour itself was great – with COVID precautions at the parks (and perhaps off season in some cases), in-person ranger-led activities have not been part of our adventure. For me, the highlight was when the ranger shut off the lights and demonstrated what it would have been like for the early (white) explorers going through by candlelight. Electricity is really something.

Not far from Wind Cave is The Mammoth Site, in Hot Springs, SD (who knew there were so many “Hot Springs” across the US?). This open dig site is small but packed with amazing ice age fossils, and the experience included a short educational video explaining how so many creatures fell into the warm water trap (it was cold out, the hot spring pool provided tempting liquid water, mammoths fell in and then couldn’t climb out the slippery sides of the sinkhole. bummer for them, great for scientists today). As a bonus, Grayson and Madelyn caught me in a weak moment and are now the proud owners of “mammothy”, a baby stuffed mammoth (Grayson) and “rainbow sloth baby”, self explanatory (Madelyn).

Tuesday, we headed to Mount Rushmore to see presidents’ faces in a mountain. I was glad we went on a weekday morning; our campground neighbors who went on the weekend said the crowds were huge. The size of this type of public art/engineering project is impressive. I would have guessed that a lot of chiseling was involved…but it was really a lot of dynamite.

Wednesday, we headed a bit further to Rapid City, where we started at the Dinosaur Museum by popular demand. It was ok. Next door, though was the Reptile Gardens, and that was well worth the entrance fee. We saw a LOT of snakes, crocodiles, and some non-reptiles. Madelyn’s favorite part was the “funny mirrors” (and the cockroach who lived in a dollhouse, ew!).

Thursday we took the 1880 Steam train ride from Hill City to Keystone, sipping hot chocolate and chatting up a delightful family who had come from Sioux Falls just ride the train over and over for a couple days with their son. In Keystone, Madelyn discovered what I’m sure will be a life-long love of ranch dressing, and we did some “panning for gems” at an old gold mine. We were warned that panning for gold was quite difficult, whereas both Grayson and Madelyn are excellent at finding pretty rocks. The train ride back was scenic, but we were all tired by the time we returned and I was glad that takeout burgers were the dinner plan.

Saturday morning we took the scenic drive through the Needles, stopping a couple times to climb some rocks and take in the view. After seeing some more buffalo, prairie dogs, and the cave tour, we were ready for an ice cream stop, and a bucket of good fried chicken.