We knew Yellowstone would require multiple visits and we hoped to cover the southern portion as well as the rest of Grand Teton on this trip. Unfortunately, we seriously underestimated the Yellowstone Lake and West Thumb district and will have to return for a summer visit.
On previous trips, we entered through the West Entrance and the North Entrance through the Roosevelt Arch, so for this trip we drove I-80 to I-15 and followed the Snake River up to Jackson, Wyoming and in through the South Entrance. We drove through Grand Teton on to the Snake's headwaters off the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Parkway. There we stayed at a Flagg Ranch cabin which was central to the areas we wanted to visit.
West Thumb was our first surprise. The maps show it as a mere bay of Yellowstone Lake, but it's actually a caldera that formed inside the giant Yellowstone caldera a half million years later. The geyser basin there is not as well known but it does have colorful hotsprings and dormant lakeshore geysers.
The Lake Area was our second surprise. The Lake Yellowstone Hotel is the oldest hotel in the entire National Park system and it was recently renovated for the seventh time. The hotel has a massive lounge overlooking Lake Yellowstone and the dining room there reminded me of the one at the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite. The hotel is a beautiful place, except perhaps for its current yellow exterior. Nevertheless, we're interested in staying there in the summertime.
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| Yellowstone Lake Hotel |
In Grand Teton we had unfinished business. Both the Jackson Lake Lodge and Coulter Bay Marina were closed for the season the first time we visited there. We returned to see the lodge and take the boat tour of Jackson Lake. The lounge at the lodge was just as impressive as the one at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and, in Wyoming, Jackson Lake is second only to Yellowstone Lake in size.
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| Tour Boat with Mount Moran Behind |
From Grand Teton we drove the backroads of Wyoming to the southern Black Hills area of South Dakota. The prairie countryside was nothing but Black Angus cattle and oil pumps. But then there were also a few pronghorn.
We decided that the pronghorn should be Wyoming's state mammal simply on the basis of numbers. We saw single bucks, mating pairs, some harems of five or so, and a few herds of twenty or more. In all, we saw several hundred and, as with Florida's alligators, by the end of the day we had had our fill and found ourselves saying, "Oh, gee, there's another one."
THE SOUTHERN BLACK HILLS
The northern Black Hills are noted for Sturgis and Deadwood, but the southern portion is much different. The big draw these days is Mount Rushmore and my plan was to take my photographs and check it off my list. However, I was surprised to discover just how controversial the monument is.
In addition to the fact that it's clearly unfinished, the original conception for the monument was to honor the Heroes of the American West and would have included Buffalo Bill, Lewis and Clark, and Chief Red Cloud. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor hired to create the monument, wanted a broader appeal and decided on the four former Presidents instead.
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| An Unfinished Monument |
The Lakota response to this was to commission a Native American carving that would dwarf Mount Rushmore. Work on the carving began in 1948 and Crazy Horse's head, itself larger than all of Mount Rushmore, was finished in the late 1990's. Little has been accomplished since and no finish date is contemplated. At present, work is being performed on the hair at the top of the head and on the finger pointing out. A drawing of the proposed horse adorns the rock face.
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| Crazy Horse Memorial After 70 Years of Work |
CUSTER STATE PARK
Our visit to Mount Rushmore took us up Iron Mountain Road, noted for its spire rock structures, road loops, pig-tail bridges and three tunnels. The tunnels were constructed to frame Mount Rushmore for amazing views.
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| Iron Mountain Road Tunnel |
There are mountain goats along the roadway and the grasslands at the base of the road are home to bison, prairie dogs, burros, and pronghorn. Neither the goats nor the burros are native. The mountain goats are all descended from six loaned to Custer State Park by Canada in 1924. Their descendants escaped and thrived. The burros are descended from working burros that were abandoned when they were no longer needed and are quite comfortable begging for food.
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| A Feeding Mountain Goat |
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| Feeding the Burros |
Of course, the highlight of Custer State Park is the bison herd. The era of the cattle drive is long over, but cattle roundups are still simply a standard part of ranching. Bison roundups, however, are rare, and when the state of Wyoming performs its annual Buffalo Roundup of its 1300 head, somewhere between 15 and 20,000 people show up to watch. It makes for quite a spectacle.
If you search for "Buffalo Roundup" on YouTube, you can find videos of previous years' roundups that took place on warm, sunny days in September. Ours wasn't like that.
We woke up to several inches of snow in the town of Custer and the prairie grasslands in Custer State Park were slick from hoarfrost. The bison weren't interested in anything too risky; their progress was steady, but stately.
BLACK HILLS CENTRAL RAILROAD
This historic railroad is quite an elaborate and impressive operation. The 1880 Train is pulled by a steam engine and operates today between Hill City and Keystone in South Dakota. This is a former mining route that carried gold and, later, materials for the construction of Mount Rushmore.
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| Nancy Supervising Railroad Operations |
WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK
Established in 1903, Wind Cave was the seventh National Park and the first cave park. It has since been eclipsed by Mammoth, Carlsbad, and even the nearby Jewel Cave National Monument.
I ducked my way through the Garden of Eden tour where we saw the rare boxwork formations that develop from erosion of material rather than the more common accretion seen in most limestone caverns.
The cave itself actually breathes. Its efforts to maintain an atmospheric equilibrium pulls in and expels air and gives the cave its name. It has long been known by Native Americans, and in fact, the Lakota origin story tells us that, in the beginning, humans came up to earth from here. The cave was discovered by white settlers on a still day in 1881 when a gust of underground wind from the only known natural opening, a hole hardly big enough for an adult to climb through, blew Jesse Bingham's hat off his head.
Established in 1903, Wind Cave was the seventh National Park and the first cave park. It has since been eclipsed by Mammoth, Carlsbad, and even the nearby Jewel Cave National Monument.
I ducked my way through the Garden of Eden tour where we saw the rare boxwork formations that develop from erosion of material rather than the more common accretion seen in most limestone caverns.
The cave itself actually breathes. Its efforts to maintain an atmospheric equilibrium pulls in and expels air and gives the cave its name. It has long been known by Native Americans, and in fact, the Lakota origin story tells us that, in the beginning, humans came up to earth from here. The cave was discovered by white settlers on a still day in 1881 when a gust of underground wind from the only known natural opening, a hole hardly big enough for an adult to climb through, blew Jesse Bingham's hat off his head.
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| Natural Opening on Left, Excavated Opening on Right |
Nearby Jewel Cave was established as a National Monument in 1907 and is the 3rd longest in the world (behind Mammoth and Sistema Sac Actun in Mexico). There is some speculation that Jewel Cave actually connects to Wind Cave by way of, as yet, undiscovered passageways. Even if these exist, the combined cave would probably still be shorter than Mammoth Cave.
