Buffalo, Buffalo and more Buffalo!

We didn't realize ahead of time that seeing Mount Rushmore would take such a small amount of time, so we had an extra day here in Custer.  There is more to see here, so we still had an eventful day.  Mostly due to the buffalo (which are actually bison, but commonly called buffalo here).  We started by just exploring the little town of Custer.  Around the city are painted buffalo, similar to the painted Hokie Birds in Blacksburg.  We did take a small sampling of pictures with some of these as we toured the main drag of Custer.

For lunch we hit the highly recommended Black Hills Burger and Bun Co.  We found it to be worthy of all the praise.  We each had a delicious burger there and would recommend it to anyone traveling to the area.

For our afternoon fun we headed into Custer State Park to drive along the wildlife loop.  There were all sorts of animals we were hoping to see, primarily the buffalo.  The drive started slowly... we saw a couple of deer (which live in our backyard back home, so that wasn't quite as thrilling for us) and some cute prairie dogs.  Then we drove for miles just enjoying the landscape because there were no animals for us to see.  We finally came across some stopped cars and paparazzi and found a small herd of friendly burros.

We finally hit pay dirt near the end of the drive when we found a very large herd of buffalo.  We pulled up with the line of cars (no one pushing their children outside with these animals thankfully!!!) and suddenly all the buffalo were moving.  We had arrived just when the herd decided to head to a field on the other side of the road.  This was very exciting for us, but also a bit on the scary side.  They are massive animals and there were a great many of them.  It was still an amazing experience to be surrounded by them especially since there were a lot of young calves with them.  Check out the video.

After we left the park we had a minor encounter with a couple of pronghorns and then we headed up route 16 to see Mount Rushmore through the tunnels.  Yes, we did go back to Rushmore, our parking pass is good through December, and we were so close, so why not?  We did not stay long, but it was still impressive and then when we left we found a Mountain goat momma with her baby .