Wind Cave National Park

 Badlands and Wind Cave are close enough together we decided to visit both on the same day. Most of the time we just told the car navigation to go to a national park and it worked perfectly. This time not so much. Instead of "navigate to Wind Cave National Park" I should have added "visitor center. When we were near the park it routed us off the main road onto a gravel road called "Lame Johnny" road. That should have been a big red flag, we should have stopped and checked google maps but didn't because it looked like only a few miles on that road and the road was really smooth for a gravel road. After 6 miles we ended up in Custer state park where it turned us onto another gravel road and thru a narrow 1 car gate into Wind Cave National Park.

We should have stopped and backed up, it had put us on a 1 line gravel road too narrow to turn around into the back of the park. It was about a 10 mile very slow drive to get thru the park and back on a paved road before we found the visitor center.

 

Because we spent the morning at Badlands, by the time we got to the Wind Cave visitor center it was too late in the day and all tours of the cave were sold out so we just drove through the park.

The park wildlife was similar to the last couple of parks, Bison and Prairie Dogs. The Bison head was on both sides of the road and sometimes in the road.

Baby bison are called a calf but are nicknamed "red dogs" because of their color at birth. We didn't learn that at any of the parks but at a bar where the child menu was called the "red dogs menu".

One of the many bison traffic jams we ran into.

In addition to Bison we spotted a coyote running among the herd.