South Dakota – Treat Yourself to Travel

Cluster your day around Custer

October 29, 2017November 15, 2017Posted in National Parks, Read Them All, State CapitolTagged Coffee shop, Colorado, South Dakota, Travel, USA Travel, Wyoming1 Comment

Sunrise at Custer State Park | Teamtravelsblog

South Dakota amazed us! Sylvan Lake and a drive along the Needles Highway in Custer State Park shouldn’t be missed! Jewel Cave National Monument is incredible and different from nearby Wind Cave. Our whirlwind three day trip wraps up here with a pit stop in Cheyenne and Denver too!

South Dakota Trip Highlights on Sunday, October 29, 2017

The animals – elk, bison, pronghorn, white-tailed deer
Jewel Cave National Monument
Crazy Horse Memorial
Custer State Park – Sylvan Lake and Needles Highway
Cheyenne, WY – Paramount Café, Big Boots
Denver, CO – 16^th Street Mall

I woke up super early, so I decided to get our day started. We headed for 16A (road name) from Rapid City, South Dakota so we could get on Iron Mountain Road. I read online and I was told that Iron Mountain Road was a windy road into Custer State Park that offered cool one lane tunnels. There were a few benefits of going before the sunrise: 1) The night sky is visible and filled with stars; 2) Not a single other car on the road; 3) Tons of deer. The road has a few pull offs and eventually connects in with the Wildlife Loop of Custer State Park by the visitor center. This was great for us because we arrived to the Wildlife Loop right around sunrise (sunrise time: 7:25 am) and the perfect time for animal viewing.

Bison on the Wildlife Loop | Teamtravelsblog

As we began our drive from east to west, we saw two male elk in the distance. As we watched them, they ultimately approached the road and crossed the street in front of us. Talk about good timing! Throughout our drive, we saw many buffalo and some white-tailed deer too. The highlight though was when we saw four pronghorn on the side of the road. I’m really happy they weren’t scared off by our car because we were able to get some great photos and video!

Pronghorn in Custer State Park | Teamtravelsblog

From the Wildlife Loop we headed through Custer to get to Jewel Cave National Monument. The entire time drive is through the Black Hills National Forest, which in and of itself is beautiful. Jewel Cave is often compared with Wind Cave since they’re only about 45 minutes apart from each other. In my opinion, the two caves are quite different and both worth a look. We took the 10 a.m., 80 minute Natural Tour ($12/person). The size of the cave, which is ranked #3 in the world, feels enormous compared with Wind Cave. There are incredible stalactites (icicle-shaped and hang from the cave) and stalagmites (generally under the stalactite and formed from the water dripping). While Wind Cave is known for its boxwork, the stalactites and stalagmites are more abundant in Jewel Cave.

"Bacon" at Jewel Cave — “Bacon” at Jewel Cave | Teamtravelsblog

There’s also a really amazing formation known as “bacon”, which legitimately looks like the world’s biggest bacon strip found in Jewel Cave. We found the tour to be worthwhile and also enjoyed a peaceful “Walk on the Roof” above ground.

After leaving Jewel Cave, we headed back to Custer to check out the Crazy Horse Memorial. Crazy Horse is not an animal, but rather a Native American leader of the Lakota tribe. This Memorial is not a finished work, but rather a work in progress that was started in the 1940s.

Current Crazy Horse Memorial — Crazy Horse Memorial | Teamtravelsblog

If you pay the $12/person, you gain access to a very large museum of Native American history. We found the 23 minute video to be really informative and it talks about the history of the Memorial as well as the continued work. It turns out that a Native American, known as Standing Bear, approached Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish man to take on the creation of the Crazy Horse Memorial. Mr. Ziolkowski also happened to be a Mount Rushmore sculptor. Since his passing, his family created a foundation that continues to work on the Memorial and the museum offers a large scale statue of what they expect the final Memorial to look like.

Crazy Horse Mini Version | Teamtravelsblog

You can definitely get a view of the Memorial without entering the Crazy Horse Memorial area. This may interest you, especially since it’s another $4 if you want to take a school bus closer to the Memorial, which is an active construction site. Nevertheless, we both learned a lot in our short visit.

From here, we knew we wanted to try to see Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park and drive along the Needles Highway. As we drove toward the Sylvan Lake Entrance, we saw some enormous longhorn cattle. Past the Custer State Park pay station, there is a parking lot for Sylvan Lake. This lake is an absolute hidden gem – it’s beautiful! While it was very cold out, we braced it to take a short walk by the lake which boasts enormous rocks.

We then followed the signs for the Needles Highway. It’s a very windy road, has an 8-foot wide tunnel that I was sure we wouldn’t fit through and views similar to what you’d experience at Zion National Park. This part of Custer State Park could definitely be a national park – it’s incredible! One curve after the tunnel, we saw a man with binoculars pulled over. We joined him and after our eyes adjusted, we realized he had spotted mountain goats blending into the side of the mountain. What a treat! If we come back, we will definitely spend more time exploring here.

Needles Highway | Teamtravelsblog

Sylvan Lake | Teamtravelsblog

We hit the road to start our ride back to Denver, Colorado. The drive is beautiful and you can enjoy fast speeds and see animals like horses, cows and bison on both sides of the road. It was a few hours before we made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming. This is the capitol, but unfortunately their state capitol building was under construction so we didn’t get a good picture of the building or a chance to tour the inside. A few minutes up the street we found free parking and walked to the Paramount Café located at 1607 Capitol Avenue so I could get a coffee treat.

Paramount Cafe in Cheyenne | Teamtravelsblog

This place was decorated for Halloween and I ordered a Casa Bonita (honey, cinnamon + vanilla latte) from their “super secret menu”. This is one of the most reasonably priced coffee shops I’ve been in to, which is probably a little insight into the cost of living here.

Up the street from the Paramount Café, you can discover a few of the “Big Boots of Cheyenne”. There are a few around the Depot Plaza and Museum. Even the clock on the old train station was decked out for Halloween with an orange color and cat-like eyes. This was a good pit stop on our journey back to Denver. Since we made surprisingly good time, and it was Sunday, we found a free parking spot on Champa Street only a few blocks from the 16^th Street Mall. You’ll have to read about our previous and more complete Denver experience in another blog post.

"Big Boot" at Cheyenne Depot Plaza — “Big Boot” at Cheyenne Depot Plaza | Teamtravelsblog

We returned our rental car and made our red eye Frontier flight without issue. This concludes our incredible three day adventure in South Dakota with a side of Cheyenne and a sip of Denver. We hope you’ll follow us to our next adventure!

The Baddest Lands Around

October 28, 2017November 7, 2017Posted in National Parks, Read Them AllTagged Coffee shop, National Park Pass, South Dakota, Travel, USA Travel, Weekend Trip3 Comments

Wake up at Custer State Park and then enjoy all that the Badlands National Park has to offer! We loved seeing so many animals in their natural habitat. One of the biggest highlights was seeing two male big-horned sheep fight!

South Dakota Highlights on Saturday, October 28, 2017

The animals – elk, bison, swift fox, deer, badgers, prairie dogs, big-horned sheep
Sunrise along the Wildlife Loop at Custer State Park, drove west to east
Wall Drug for coffee and a donut
Badlands National Park – Door, Window, Notch and Cliff Shelf Trail
Badlands National Park – Big Badlands, Yellow Mounds and Pinnacles Overlook
Rapid City – Art Alley and president statues

We woke up excited to find more animals. If our day visiting Wind Cave National Park was any indication, we were going to be in for a good day. It was a very short drive from our lodge to the Blue Bell entrance onto the Wildlife Loop of Custer State Park. The first animal we came across was an entire herd of elk! To top it off, the elk were bugling (this is the sound they make)! We were completely mesmerized.

Elk in Custer State Park | Teamtravelsblog

Once the herd moved along, we did too. We continue along the loop until we came across four bison grazing near the road. As we watched them, they began to walk toward our car. Was I scared? Uh yea, a little! The bison watched us to make sure it was safe to cross the road behind our car, which was a great opportunity for more pictures and video.

Driving through Custer State Park is a must on your visit to South Dakota! As we continued, we saw an endless gang of bison.

Bison at Custer State Park | Teamtravelsblog

The sunrise was beautiful as the day began to break. We also found tons of deer by the visitor center at the I-36 intersection. This is the best map I found if you want to follow along: https://gfp.sd.gov/state-parks/directory/custer/docs/custer-map.pdf We exited the park on I-36 east and continued to spot bison. We used this exit so we could easily get on to I-90 toward Wall Drug and the Badlands National Park. Wall Drug was about a 75 minute drive.

From the moment you get on I-90, where you can drive 80 miles per hour, you’ll start to see hokey advertising for Wall Drug. Mike was skeptical, but I was determined to stop here and try their 5 cent coffee and famous donuts! “Wall Drug” is the name of the store, which is located in Wall, South Dakota. The maple donut was delicious and the coffee was good – who can beat 5 cents? If you have a few minutes to spare, check out the backyard’s giant jackalope for a photo op. In less than 30 minutes, we had arrived at the Badlands National Park. We were thankful, yet again, to have our Annual National Park Pass for $80, since this park currently costs $20 by car.

Our first stop in the park was the Big Badlands Overlook. Make sure to take note of the details on the mounds and stay alert for rattlesnakes. Luckily, throughout our entire day in this park, we did not see a rattlesnake. Needless to say, I would have flipped out if we did!

As we continued, there was a large parking lot that had the trailhead for the Door Trail, Windows Trail and the Notch Trail. We started with the Door Trail, which begins with a nice boardwalk and then offers yellow numbered poles to follow to the “End of Trail” sign. It’s about 0.75 miles round-trip and a good hike to immerse yourself in the park. We learned here that it was named “the Badlands” by the French who called it “Les Mauvaises Terres” because the land was difficult to traverse. The Window Trail was super short and has a pretty view. One of the big highlights for us was the Notch Trail! The trail starts off easy as you’re following the poles to stay on the trail. Then you arrive at a wooden ladder and have a choice. We opted to climb the wooden ladder because it’s part of the adventure! Once at the top, you follow along some steep cliffs, may have some challenges finding a pole to follow and eventually make it to the end which overlooks the Cliff Shelf Trail. We met two really nice cross-country travelers here and swapped stories about our favorite national parks and must sees! The Cliff Shelf Trail was another short and beautiful boardwalk trail with stairs.

If you want to follow along or plan out your trip, click here for a good, free map of Badlands National Park.

Since we were at the Badlands during the off-season, the Ben Reifel Visitor Center was the only visitor center open. It has real facilities and a place to fill your water bottles. To date, we’ve found that all of the park rangers we’ve met offer great advice. He recommended that we drive the Wildlife Loop Road for our best chance at seeing wildlife and that we continue onto the unpaved road called Sage Creek Rim Road in order to see bison, prairie dogs and potentially other animals. He also advised that people were reporting big-horned sheep near the Conata points of interest on the map. We also learned that the Badlands is a free hike park, so you can hike anywhere, but they strongly recommend following an existing buffalo path since this animal always takes the path of least resistance. You’ll know a buffalo path when you see one.

While we stopped for some pictures of the scenery, our first major stop was the Yellow Mounds Overlook. I don’t know why, but the color yellow that twinkles in the light reminded me of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz.

We met a bike rider who thought he spotted a big-horned sheep, so we got in our car and followed him. We turned onto Conata Road and sure enough, there were tons of big-horned sheep! It felt like we hit the jackpot when the two males started butting heads!

| Teamtravelsblog

We were completely mesmerized as we watched the female big-horned sheep graze and the males continue to fight off and on. As the next 30 or 45 minutes unfolded, there became a clear winner, the dominant male who rejoined the rest and left the inferior male to lick his wounds.

Before turning onto Sage Creek Rim Road, we found two young big-horned sheep in the Pinnacles Overlook parking lot. Have your camera ready on the Sage Creek Rim Road. As we were driving, we saw a swift fox cross the road with a prairie dog in its mouth! We opened our windows and the prairie dog town was going crazy! They were so upset that one of their own was kidnapped! Mike had a really good eye and spotted a badger! We’d never seen one of these before. The badger was on the hunt for a prairie dog itself. This badger interrupted another badger keeping quiet that appeared to have a better strategy than the first one. It was interesting as we scanned the land, there were no prairie dogs nearby, as they had all disappeared into their mounds and had clearly taken note of the badgers lurking. As we continued on the drive, we saw bison and a few loner big-horned sheep. If you’re looking for a specific place with prairie dog (even though they’re everywhere), check out Roberts Prairie Dog Town.

Bison | Teamtravelsblog

| Teamtravelsblog

If it isn’t obvious, Badlands National Park is incredible!

We returned to the Pinnacles Overlook to watch the sunset. The light illuminates the landscape in a magnificent way. We also saw another big-horned sheep grazing. As dusk set-in, we drove back toward the Yellow Mounds Overlook and saw tons of deer on the side of the road. Make sure to be careful and drive with your high beams when you can. We exited the park at the Pinnacles Entrance which was about 9 miles to the interstate. We saw more deer along this drive then we saw people in Badlands National Park!

Sunset at the Pinnacles Overlook | Teamtravelsblog

Mike drove us safely to the city called Rapid City in South Dakota, while I took a nice warm car nap. The parking on Main Street was free and made it right before 7 p.m. I wouldn’t go out of your way, but if you have 30 minutes or so to spare, it’s fun to check out the various president statues and Art Alley (by the Alex Johnson Hotel) all within walking distance. Art Alley has some cool graffiti. We found statues of FDR (note the cane behind the podium), Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur to name a few. Since it was in the 50s, we found a safe place to carsleep for the night.

Art Alley in Rapid City | Teamtravelsblog

I hope you’ll check back with us soon to hear about our Sunday travels. They include more Custer State Park highlights, Jewel Cave National Monument, Crazy Horse Memorial and some incredible drives around and through the Black Hills National Forest. I would love to have you follow us on Instagram if you enjoy our photos and content!

Wind Cave is Rushmore than a Cave

October 27, 2017November 5, 2017Posted in National Parks, Read Them AllTagged National Park Pass, South Dakota, Travel, USA Travel, Weekend Trip3 Comments

Wind Cave National Park and Mount Rushmore National Memorial are must see places on any visit to the western part of South Dakota! If you’re an animal lover, we hope you get to see bison, coyotes, prairie dogs, pronghorn and mountain goats like we did!

South Dakota Highlights on Friday, October 27, 2017

The animals – bison, coyotes, prairie dogs, mule deer, pronghorn, mountain goats
Rankin Ridge trail (1 mile loop) at Wind Cave National Park
Wind Cave natural entrance tour
Boland Ridge trail at Wind Cave National Park
Mount Rushmore National Memorial

We arrived to the Denver airport on Thursday night around 11 p.m. on a last minute, direct Frontier Flight for $97! For our three day trip, we found a car with Payless Car Rental for under $70. I love using CarRentals.com for great, last minute deals! Have I mentioned before that we’re carsleepers? Well, we are and we love it! We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot in Fort Collins, Colorado about an hour away and then headed to Wind Cave National Park (another 4 hours) in South Dakota very early in the morning. Through our travels, we’ve learned to be light packers and filled one of our two personal items with two blankets.

We entered the park from I-385 intending to find the visitor center, but turned onto I-87, which was not the right way. It was meant to be though because we got some great views of bison. We found a few bison almost instantly upon turning onto the road and then two more up the road at Lookout Point Trail. Here’s a map of the park if you want to follow along: https://www.nps.gov/wica/planyourvisit/upload/WICAmapBrochure.pdf

As we continued along I-87, there are two narrow bridges. After the second narrow bridge, we drove about another mile or so before we pulled off to the side. Stay alert because it turned out we had parked by a prairie town! A prairie town is literally grasslands with adorable prairie dogs and their homes.

Prairie Dog at Wind Cave | Teamtravelsblog

Since it was so quiet, we could hear them chirping to each other and enjoyed watching them eat and pop in and out of their mounds. From here, we turned around, made it back to I-385 and found the visitor center. On the drive up to the visitor center, again, there are TONS of prairie dogs to see. If you have an interest in touring the “Wind Cave”, it’s a good idea to buy your ticket early (we were told they’re refundable). We bought our tickets ($5 per person) for the Natural Tour for the 1 p.m. tour and got advice on places to see from the extremely helpful ranger. Since we had a little less than 3 hours before the tour (we barely missed the 10 a.m. tour), we drove back up I-87 to Rankin Ridge. It’s a relatively easy 1 mile loop that gets you to the highest point in the park. While on our hike we saw a mule deer (keeping our streak alive with this being our 7^th national park in a row of spotting a deer) and some beautiful views of the park. Traveling on the off season has some huge advantages – we didn’t see a single other person!

Coyote on I-87 — Coyote at Wind Cave | Teamtravelsblog

Rankin Ridge at Wind Cave National Park — Rankin Ridge | Teamtravelsblog

On our drive back down I-87, we looked up and saw a coyote slowly crossing the field! As we followed the coyote, we spotted a second coyote! How cool is this? I took this picture from a bit of distance with my Nikon Coolpix L340*. We also found the same bison from earlier in new positions by the Lookout Point Trail and near the intersection of I-87 and I-385. While on the main road (I-385), we drove past the visitor center and found tons of bison on the side of the road. We were in picture heaven! As we approached Gobbler Pass, we spotted a coyote (our third one)! We stopped and watched the coyote walk by two bison, completely uninterested in each other. What was interesting was listening to the prairie dogs going crazy and warning each other!

We turned around because we didn’t want to exit the park and used the map to find the tiny pull off (for about 3 cars) at the Cold Brook Canyon trailhead. It was a peaceful walk, with tons of bison remnants to watch for as we stepped.

We returned to the visitor center for the 1 p.m. tour. Wind Cave recently became the 5^th longest cave in the world (up one spot from #6). The ranger who served as the guide was super passionate and started by showing us the natural entrance. It’s really small! The park measures the barometric pressure so you can see whether the wind is blowing into or out of the cave. The highlight was entering the room at the end dubbed “The Post Office” which has beautiful boxwork (the cave is famous for this). The cave was definitely worth the $5!

We found the park map to come in handy. From I-87 we turned onto NPS-5. This is an unpaved road, but easy to drive. Along the drive we saw lots of prairie dogs and some pronghorn. We got to the intersection of NPS-5 and NPS-6 where we turned and found the small lot for the Boland Ridge trail. Again, we had to watch our step for animal remnants, but we also wanted to enjoy our surroundings. We came across a band of pronghorn. They watched us like hawks and it was fun to watch them jog away considering they’re the fastest animal in North America. We also found many more bison in this area. Wind Cave National Park impressed us!

Pronghorn at Boland Ridge | Teamtravelsblog

We drove almost an hour out of the park, through Custer (where there are gas stations) and onto Mount Rushmore National Memorial. As we were approaching the parking entrance, we spotted deer grazing and two mountain goats! As we looked up from the mountain goats, we realized they were perfectly in front of the presidents’ heads!

Mountain Goat at Mount Rushmore | Teamtravelsblog

We took advantage of the photo opportunity and then continued to the parking lot. We fully expected to pay about $11 for the parking structure, but there were no attendants when we entered shortly after 5 p.m. We parked for free and began our walk up to the memorial. The walk is beautiful. As you walk the Avenue of State Flags, you can get a picture with your home state and notate the day it became a state.

There is a large viewing area as well as steps down to another viewing area to see Mount Rushmore. Since we arrived before sunset (sunset time: 5:51 p.m.), we enjoyed the memorial in the natural light and then stayed past 6 p.m. to see the illuminated memorial which was also cool. While this place may be crowded in the summer, there were minutes at a time where we had the entire place to ourselves!

We got a great tip from the gentleman in the Mount Rushmore store. After leaving the memorial, we followed the signs for the “Profile View” where you can park and get pictures of George Washington’s profile. Since the evening temperatures were set to fall into the 20s, we opted to find a last minute hotel deal. I am a huge fan of Booking.com*. We found a highly rated lodge called Calamity Peak Lodge for under $60 in Custer. If you’ve never used Booking.com* before, I would encourage you to use my link* so we can each get $20 when you book. The lodge was really unique inside with wooden walls, clean and had all of the normal amenities. The owner was extremely nice and met us as soon as we called to check us in. I would definitely recommend this place.

As we have in previous trips, we decided to call it a night at a reasonable time so we could wake up with the birds and go searching for animals by sunrise! Check back with us to read about the animals we found in Custer State Park and the Badlands National Park on Saturday!