May 3rd. High Plains Drifters.

Wind Cave National Park South Dakota.

From the map of the park, and from Alltrails it is really hard to tell whether the trails are easy to follow or not. A lot of the trail through the park is not marked on the map. The park has numbered trails 1 to 8 with descriptions …and it was hard to tell what would align with Alltrails, so the most sensible option seemed to be to hit the visitor centre first. (That also gives me the chance to pick up a badge or a token for my collection…!!!😁 )

Chatting to the ranger we picked a trail that I think is in Alltrails…but of course…I now had no signal to download it…..so we went in ‘navigate a new trail’ mode……up to the high plains…where the buffalo….and the pronghorn antelope roam….!!!!

The trail starts out on a road around behind the visitor centre as the Canyon Trail…..the first few kms wind up along the canyon with some quite spectacular rock formations…….and the first example of the National parks philosophy of not interfering with the landscape.

Once onto the Centennial trail, the one we intended to follow, with a short climb up and the land opens up into the incredible vista of the high plains. Like many spectacular places, even when you know it’s going to be impressive….you are never quite prepared for the sheer majesty of it.

It just goes on forever, in all directions, amazing to imagine pioneers in covered wagons hauling all their worldly goods across these plains.

It’s quite a hike…..we ran into small groups of bulls.

Photographer…” Move over there a bit…..get closer..!!”

(Editor….but it’s for the blog )

Me…”NO……as in NOT A CHANCE….!!!”

The other creatures in abundance in the park are the Prairie Dogs. Now these guys…well…they are just hilarious…!!!

They live in towns, where the landscape is dotted with their burrows and the grass is chewed down, both to eat it and to open up the landscape so they can see predators coming. This behaviour also opens up the ground for other plants to get established….things that are tastier and more nutritious for the bison. It appears they have a fairly symbiotic relationship with the bison who drop their manure in the town, reinforcing the nutritious plants. Most of the bison we came across were in or around prairie dog towns.

As you approach them at first you see them scurry and run back to their burrows. As you get closer they start barking/squeaking and stand up like little sentries watching…..as you get closer still they drop down to four feet over the entrance….and when you are too close they disappear…and the next lot start…..

Then an eagle flew over…and they all turned towards the bird….clearly a bigger threat than we were. As it flew in towards them…they stood up and flapped their arms, screaming at it…then dived down the holes…!!!!

We thoroughly enjoyed them…..

The bison like to scratch and rub on the trail marker posts….so some of them are laying down beside the path, and most of them have whisps of bison wool on them….

The trail went down into Curly Canyon….a steep path down…therefore a steep path back up the other side……and past some more bones….!!

The rock formations in the canyon were something else.

We almost walked right into a much larger group of bison, about 60 cows with little tiny copper coloured calves……and a couple of big mean looking bulls that gave us the hard stares as we gingerly circled around them. (Still not getting any closer despite the photographer…!!)

The trail passes into some ponderosa pine….which, according to the literature in the visitor centre, is not the natural landscape. Wind Caves National park do regular controlled burns in the park to remove them in patches, to restore the grassland habitat for the bison herd.

We only saw one other couple out on the plains…and that was from a distance as they seemed to be on another trail.

The prairie dog towns were hilarious. ( They make a return visit in spectacular style in the next blog )

The bull Bison…..impressive but not so hilarious…!!!

We cut the trail short…but still ended up doing a 25km hike. Tired feet at the end ..but a brilliant day out.

You can totally see the landscape those pioneers must have dragged those covered wagons over…..however hard you imagine it was to do that…….I’m willing to bet it was 100 times harder.

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