The Buffalo Around Our Vehicle at Custer State Park, South Dakota

Custer State Park in South Dakota was an awesome experience that I highly recommend and cannot wait to go back to...

It was such an incredible experience. Seeing the buffalo from inside the safety of our van was wonderful. They were all around our van. We couldn't even move! The traffic was backed up for a long ways waiting for them to move off the road.

There were so many cute baby buffalo and some HUGE male buffalo. The buffalo are allowed to wander freely all over the park.

We went hiking on Creekside Trail. It is considered the easiest trail in the park. It is 2 miles long, which for us, with all of the kids, takes us a llllooooonnnnnnggggg time. I called and asked the park ranger about it and she told us that she had seen a mountain lion on that same trail just the morning before! There is a lot of wildlife around there, buffalo, mountain lions, mountain goats, elk, pronghorn antelope, and more. This trail is the handicap trail. We kept our eyes peeled. We saw many huge piles of buffalo scat, but no buffalo on the trail, thank goodness.

Pronghorn Antelope, only about 30# of meat

A few days later, we drove around the wildlife loop. We saw two enormous herds of buffalo. They like to wallow in mud and dust, I'm sure for mites and fleas, our chickens used to do it..

We found the second herd on a side road, way out. After looking at the buffalo, everywhere, Shae announced, "We are almost out of gas!" We were out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Custer State Park, on this side, back dirt road! We sat there awhile longer, enjoying the buffalo roaming...and then turned around and hoped we would make it back to civilization and not have to sleep with the mountain lions. We did make it, and had a wonderful time.

For some great facts on Bison/Buffalo - go to our online magazine - The Lemonade Digest