Day 4: Buffalo

From: Custer State Park, SD

To: Cody, WY

Rise and shine! We slept well all bundled up last night and got up early to get the day going. First things first, we had breakfast and packed up camp. During this process Heather happened to look over and see that Lola was very fixated on something to the point of quivering. She wanted something and wanted it bad. Low and behold some wild turkeys had wandered into the empty site right next to ours. Lola only needed the opportunity and it was gonna be over for some birds.

Turkeys camping one site over

After packing up we decided to journey through Custer state park in hopes of seeing some wildlife. As we journeyed through the 20-mile Wildlife loop we saw prairie dogs, fox, dozens of deer, and, well, a few buffalo. Until……..the buffalo jam!!!!!!

It's s little known fact that buffalos don't use their blinkers

There is a herd of about 1000 buffalo that roam through the park and we just happened to run into a pack of over 100 of them. They were just chillin’, eating grass, blockin traffic not caring one bit that anything needed to get past. At one point we were afraid that one or two of them would walk right into Jayne, because they didn’t seem to notice, or at least care, that we were present. Fortunately they missed us by a few inches.

Just as we were nearing the end of the jam there was one lone buffalo standing in the road looking right at us, and the sound of old western songs and tumble weeds started playing in the distance……Jayne vs. buffalo…..eww-e-eww-e-eww. Well fortunately, all ended well and the buffalo got out of the way, but it was an intense moment nonetheless.

After our buffalo adventure we headed toward town to get gas and upload our fabulous blog posts. On our way away from Custer and Mount Rushmore we passed through Crazy Horse, a town so named for the large stone carving of an old Indian chief’s face who was named (you guessed it) Crazy Horse.  

You gotta ask yourself one question..."Do I feel lucky?" Well do ya, buffalo? 

Then it was off toward Yellowstone. We soon crossed the boarder from SD into WY, which was beautiful. Nothing but rolling hills, giant plateaus, and mountain ranges in the distance. The original plan was to make it to the camp ground in Yellowstone that we were going to, but as it got dark we decided to stop in Cody, WY for the night. We wanted to drive through the Rocky's and into Yellowstone in the daylight.

Driving from Buffalo, WY to Cody, WY we crossed the Bighorn Mountains. It was dark, but you could tell that it was beautiful. The road itself was so much fun to drive. It hugged the mountains and curved gently and smoothly with this smaller yet wondrous mountain range. At the foot of the mountains the temperature was approximately 50 degrees. Crossing the mountain pass it got down to 30 degrees, then back up to about 48 on the other side. After this stretch, we decided not to drive anywhere in the dark, because we know we missed out on some awesome scenery in the Big Horn mountains. Plus, we should have seen them, because Jayne is a Big Horn edition. Sorry Jayne.