One bad day of rain, and then one good day at Custer State Park

We knew that we had lots of rain last night when hundreds of tiny frogs showed up in our campground! It rained all night and kept on raining through the next morning. In a place that gets around 16 inches of rain per year, they got 2.5 inches in the last 24 hours that we were camped outside of Badlands National Park. Smaller than a dime, these tiny frogs were jumping everywhere! 

If you remember, we still had one more night to find a camping spot since the national park cancelled our three-night reservation. We had planned to boondock the third night at the Baja OHV staging area in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. But when we drove by in the rain around noon, that parking area looked more like a lake. A 26,000 pound motor home would immediately be stuck in the mud if we pulled in there. So we continued down the highway in the rain.

We didn't go far, because a temporary stop light just turned to red as we approached. We sat for ten minutes before it turned green.

Then we were allowed to proceed through the muddy single lane track in the rain. This was going to be an interesting drive!

It rained the entire 1.5-hour drive. The road signs warned about the rough road, and Highway 44 was like one long bad roller coaster ride in a motor home in the rain.

We haven't seen this since the frost heaves on the highways in Alaska. Some of the bumps in the highway were so big they marked them with a flag and cone. If you hit these bumps at normal speed, your wheels would fly into the air. Because our national park campground reservation was canceled, we were forced to travel on such a rainy day.

We were glad that we had found an open spot at the Southern Hills Campground in Hermosa, South Dakota. A new campground with great facilities, they welcomed us for a one-night stay. We didn't find anything to do in Hermosa in the rain, but the three huge busts of three presidents out front caused us to do an internet search. We found that inspired by the success of Mount Rushmore, a sculptor designed a President's Park in Lead, South Dakota. It featured over-sized presidential statues along a winding path in the woods. In fact, this guy opened two more presidential parks in Virginia and Texas. But the public wasn't so excited about his project, and tourist attendance was underwhelming. When all three parks went bankrupt, the presidents found random homes. Three of them landed in the tiny town of Hermosa, South Dakota, in front of our rainy-day campground.

After going to church the next morning, we had blue skies for the 20-mile trip to our campground inside Custer State Park. It was a slow 20 miles because the road winds through the ponderosa pines.

We got this five-day campground reservation in this popular state park only because we booked it months ago when someone had just cancelled their reservation. They only have electricity hook-ups here, but we came with a full water tank and empty gray and black tanks. Plus, they have very nice showers to help us stretch our water supply further.

Because we arrived shortly after noon, we had time to start exploring Custer State Park right away. We stopped at the visitor center for advice, and took off on our first hike here--the 4.5-mile Lover's Leap Loop.

A fire in 2000 left some burn scars throughout the park. We hiked through a section of scorched pines at the beginning of the hike.

After a steep incline, we leveled off for our first view over the Black Hills. This entire southwest corner of South Dakota is known as the Black Hills because the thick covering of ponderosa pines made them appear black to the first explorers that were naming things.

Every year Custer State Park sets up a Trail Challenge that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. They have a different group of trails specified each year. One of the eight trails in the 2023 trail challenge is the Lover's Leap Trail.

To earn the official hiking pin for 2023, a hiker must make a rubbing with pencil and paper of the medallion located in the middle of each of those eight trails. We found the Lovers Leap medallion and took a picture because we didn't have a pencil and paper. We won't be around long enough to make the eight hikes, but this sounds like such a fun way to get people out on the trails!

Besides the hearts on that medallion, Denisa found another heart hanging from a low tree branch near that viewpoint. Its paper tag announced that it needed a home. When we checked out the website on the tag, we found that a group of sisters decided to leave quilted hearts for people to find in public places. Finders of the hearts can log where the heart was placed and add a picture. Denisa thinks she needs to get her group of sisters to make quilted hearts. What a fun hike this has been!

We finally got to the highest view point, with its rocky ledge high above the valley below. We have wandered into another of God's wonders today!

We're guessing that this is the place where lovers leap. Don't do it, Mark!

Instead, Mark sat and pondered the words of the Custer State Park poet who once lived here. If you can't read the sign easily, it says, "Custer State Park is a place where one can still be an unworried and unregimented individual and wear any old clothes and sit on a log and get their sanity back again." So Mark was wearing his old clothes, sitting on a log, and retrieving his sanity after that drive in the rain yesterday.

In the meantime, Denisa was wearing her old clothes and marching down the trail to find the first red columbine of the summer. Her sanity can no longer be found.

Mark carried our water shoes on his backpack for this hike because the ranger warned us of the high water creek crossings. He told us that we should expect to get our feet wet during the second half of the loop. But we were glad to find that planks had been laid over each of the many water crossings, and we didn't even need to change our shoes.

It was such a beautiful evening in such a beautiful place! The facilities are first-rate here at Custer State Park, including five lakes and nine campgrounds. This state park is nicer and bigger than some of the national parks we have visited, and we're glad to be here.

It was so nice outside that we decided to drive the 18-mile wildlife loop to see if any animals were enjoying the weather. We also liked that the visitor centers in this state park are open until 8:00 p.m. to answer visitors' questions. The brand new Bison Center on the wildlife loop was open until 8:00, so we stopped in to learn all about the 1,400 animals in the state park's bison herd.

One of the volunteers at the Bison Center suggested that we leave the paved road and travel one of the gravel roads that cut through the center of this section of the park. He added that if we went that direction we "should have bison so close that they could lick your pickup." We saw the big herd scattered over the green hills in the distance.

He was right! Once we got further down that gravel road, the bison could have licked our pickup if they weren't so intent on grazing that lush green grass.

A few other people were on this sunset wildlife drive, and we had to stop to let the bison walk across the road between us.

It was a delight to be in the middle of this huge herd of bison. At one time American bison were hunted almost to extinction. But programs like the one at Custer State Park have brought them back to a healthy number once again.

From where we were sitting in the pickup, we could see over a thousand bison. The numbers in the herd have swelled because more than 300 new calves have been born this spring.

These animals were so close to us that a zoom lens wasn't necessary. In fact, all of these pictures were taken with our cell phones.

We could have sat watching these beasts of the prairie for hours. Some babies were suckling, some of the young bulls were butting heads, and older calves were kicking up their hooves and playing. But the sun is going down, and we're a long ways on very slow gravel roads from home.

So we left the herd and headed towards the motor home. After one bad day of rain in transit, we certainly had a delightfully good first day at Custer State Park!