Sept. 9, 2016 Custer State Park and Rapid City

Today the plan was to tour Custer State Park to view wildlife. The website states that visitors would see wild life and enjoy the beauty of the park.
We left around 9:15 am and arrive at the park around 10:15 at the new visitor center. We saw a short movie about the park, wild life and outdoor activities.

We then got in the car driving on the wilderness loop and after a short drive we saw our first large group of bison. We watched them for a bit and took some photos and then started driving again. In 10 mins we saw a bunch of cars on a side road and saw several bison coming at our car and walked right by us. We took some great photos of the leader and some of the followers. We drove up closer to the other cars and saw another small group of bison and watched them and took more photos.

This is one of several bison that walked right by our car.

We started to go back down to the main road when Sophia spotted a pronghorn antelope in the field. It blended in so well I could not see it. Later when we zoomed in on the photos Sophia took we could see the antelope resting in the grass .

We then headed to the Blue Bell Lodge for lunch. After a 10 min. d

rive we arrived at the lodge.
It was a log cabin and had several rooms and a bar and the walls were decorated with deer heads and a bison head in the lobby.

We had a good lunch and then continued on the wild life loop that old take us back to the road we came in on.
On the way we saw some cars stooped to see the wild donkeys that would come up to the car windows begging for treats like apples and carrots. Very cool to see them and the ones in the meadow.

We then drove on to the exit and headed back to Rapid City.
After a rest we walked around  Memorial Park which had an exhibit on the Berlin Wall and a piece of the Berlin Wall.

We went into the historic downtown and walked around looking at the bronze sculptures of past Presidents and then went to the Firehouse for dinner.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel.