We are staying at Custer State Park in South Dakota. We have this park as home base for a week or so and we will be taking little day trips out to explore. Last night when we arrived we set up camp and then enjoyed a drive around the park to get the lay of the land. We saw lots of buffalo and many pronghorn. This male wanted to play roadblock.
We spent the evening watching a movie at the campground theatre about the Buffalo Roundup. Every year they round up all the buffalo, vaccinate them and then sell off part of the heard. They keep on average 1500 buffalo! Amazing!
We took a morning trip out to Jewel Cave and explored the amazing Jewel Cave National Park.
Their specialty in cave formation is dogstooth spar. It is a crystal like formation and very pretty.
We had a great tour in the caves.
This strip of cave bacon was about 20 feet long! Spectacular!
We successfully earned our Junior Ranger badges and patches.
After the caves we headed to Mount Rushmore. They charge you to park, even if you have a National Parks pass. The food was expensive but we had to eat. We worked on our Junior Ranger books, watched a film about the making of the monument and toured the museum.
Mount Rushmore was pretty amazing. The walking trail that takes you closer was under construction so we just viewed from the patio.
I loved the flags from all of the US states and territories.
We earned our badges and took yet another Junior Ranger pledge.
We headed back to the campground and Dad dropped us all off at the visitors center for a Junior Naturalist class. We had a nature scavenger hunt and had to find things like bugs, scat, animal fun and feathers. E and I teamed up and got done first.
We headed back to the campground and relaxed around a campfire. We went to another campground movie on the history of the park. We had to attend the movies for credit towards their Junior Naturalist program. It is a very hard program to complete but we are motivated.
