A Couple of Herds and Some Kind Strangers - Dakota Vacation blog post #12

Yes, I’m still writing about our vacation out west in June. Seems we did way more than I thought we did at the time. Today, I’ll tell you about two wildlife encounters which happened thanks to kind strangers.

First, we were driving along the paved road of Custer State Park when a car came off of the dirt road to the right and the driver was waving at us like crazy.

We stopped to listen and he said that there were thousands of buffalo back up the road they had just came down.

We thanked them and hung a sharp right.

          After driving about ten minutes, we came over a ridge and saw maybe twenty buffalo off to the left.  

          Okay, nice to see them, but it wasn’t close to thousands.     

          After a few dozen pictures, we continued and drove over the next hill.      

          Ah ha. This was where the herd of thousands was grazing. Well, still maybe not thousands, but certainly hundreds. 

       And lots and lots of adorable calves. 

          And this guy. Not sure where he came from; he’s just trying to fit in. 

      We finally got through the herd and drove another 10 or 15 minutes to where the road narrowed with hills on both sides, sparse trees sprinkled about. An SUV with Michigan plates was stopped in front of us, looking at something. We couldn’t tell what, but we stopped behind them and just kept looking too.

          I took random pictures up the hillside, hoping my camera would catch what I could not. 

          Eventually, another vehicle came from the other direction and the first folks flagged them down. Hubby crawled out of our Honda at that point and asked what they were looking at. 

            A herd of elk were on the top of the ridge. Knowing now what I was looking for and where, I was able to zoom in on them with my camera and catch them, while hanging out the sunroof. 

          Scrolling back through my previous pictures, yes, I captured them then as well, but pretty out of focus. And does it count if I can’t see what I’m taking pictures of?