Buffalo Encounters

"I'm going to get you in shape, even if it kills you," announced Andy when we were back at the car after the tour of Wind Cave in South Dakota.

"Great," I told him unenthusiastically. "Does that mean a hike?"

He pulled out the map and spread it on the hood of Little Red. "We will do this loop from Lookout Point Trail to Centennial Trail. Then later we can do the one-mile nature trail at the old fire tower."

The first 4.6-mile trek crossed mixed grass prairie, followed a ravine, crisscrossed a brook eight or ten times and led back up the slope to the parking area. But it was hardly uneventful. As we watched for rattlesnakes in the first mile and rounded a small stand of pine trees, we came upon a lone bull buffalo not 50 feet away. For several minutes we froze, as the two-ton adult animal stared and stood his ground a few feet from where we would follow the trail. I wanted to turn back, but I also knew it was not wise to turn my back on a wild animal. He pawed the ground.

"SSShhhhh," said Andy. "Let's just see what he is going to do."

"Great!" I thought, this time panicking and already backing slowly up the hill behind me.

Eyeing us, the bison crossed the trail and then moved a short distance toward the pine trees.

"Let's go," called Andy. He took off at a jog down the trail. "Stay close behind me," he ordered, already running 20 feet ahead.

Gasping for air, the camera bouncing on my hip, half racing to keep up and half walking fast so as not to attract the attention of the buffalo, I followed. My chest pounding, I doubled over in agony.

"I knew when he started rubbing on the tree and stopped looking right at us that we could get by," Andy explained matter-of-factly as we continued on the hike.

Two hours and a lot of deep breaths later, we drove up a ponderosa-covered slope toward the old fire tower for the second hike of the day along Rankin Ridge Trail.

"Wouldn't you know it," I said to Andy. "Look over there." By the side of the road grazed another big bull.

Keeping an eye on the animal, Andy zipped past him a few hundred feet and pulled into the parking lot. The bison was out of our line of sight down the slope in the trees. "That one won't be coming any farther," he said confidently. "There is nothing to eat way up here in the woods."

Following trail signs, we climbed to the fire lookout and gazed on the world below.

Half an hour later as we stepped from the tree cover to the edge of the parking lot, Andy said, "You go over to the post holder and put away the trail guide. I'll open the car."
As I put the pamphlet back into the holder, I looked right into the huge black eyes of the bull, not 30 feet away.

"Aaaaannnnnnddddeeeee!" I backed up, turned and ran for Little Red.

We haven't hopped into the car quite so fast in a long time! It was a good thing Andy had already unlocked the door on my side or I probably would have aimed for the roof. The bull walked right past my window, a few arms lengths to the right of the dwarfed red Saturn.

But things always happen in threes. The next buffalo encounter of the same kind happened as we left the park and almost drove into a herd of 30 animals blocking the road. A truck coming from the opposite direction had the same reaction: stop dead. Momentarily we felt uncomfortable as some of the larger animals headed right toward Little Red.

"How do buffalo feel about the color red?" I asked Andy with mounting skepticism.

After ten minutes of sitting quietly and watching the herd change position, we were passed by a silver Cadillac that wove between four young cows and took off. The truck followed from the other direction, and then Andy made his move before the buffalo closed ranks on other cars in the roadside congestion. We were free and hopefully done with buffalo jams for one day.

Wind Cave's Garden of Eden Tour

"Meet at the bottom of the stairs before 11:30 a.m. for the Garden of Eden Tour of Wind Cave," said Ranger Lacey, handing us the tickets. "I'll be your guide."

For an hour Andy and I drove through the Wind Cave National Park, checking out the overlooks, reading the informative signs and watching for animals. Then before 11:30 we grabbed jackets, camera and the pink tickets for the tour underground.

One of the few caves in the world that features boxwood formations, Wind Cave at a constant 53 degrees is also the fourth longest identified cave in the world with 134 recorded miles of intersecting passages. Lacey explained that the winds suggest scientifically that only a small portion of the cave, possibly as little as 10%, has actually been discovered and mapped.

Two little girls whispered, "I like the other cave better," but Lacey provided fascinating history about feuding owners at many of the stops and made the tour fun.

Living the Dreams

"That's a good billboard," I pointed, and Andy swerved into the parking lot of an imposing stone castle. A stained glass window glowed in the afternoon sun.

Stone Faces Winery offered three tastings free. In its infancy, the wine business seems improbable in South Dakota, and most bottles cost more than $17.00.

Andy said, "The wines taste crisp and sweet, but they must import all the grapes. They don't have a long enough summer to grow them. Maybe global warming is helping."

Up the road Prairie Berry Winery crammed with people on Sunday afternoon. Virginia and Diane served us the five free tastings, which included many with infusions of local fruit like choke cherry, crab apple and, unusually enough, pumpkin. Visitors lined up at the cash registers to purchase the sweet but rather pricey treats.

Twice we walked all the trails at Mount Rushmore--Sunday midday with guests present and Monday morning in solitude.

Andy read Gutzon Borglum's words that a monument should be monumental in size, like the Colossus of Rhodes or the Sphinx of Egypt, and that it should last through the test of time to show the future what kind of people we were. There is no doubt that he accomplished what he set out to do when he carved the granite of the Black Hills.

"He transformed a mountain into a larger-than-life work of art," I read as Andy browsed in the museum. "That's what Borglum accomplished here when he carved the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. It was his tribute to our country's founding, growth, preservation and development," I told Andy.

Contemporaries laughed, but Borglum's vision prevailed: "place them as close to heaven as we can" and "until the wind and the rain shall wear them away."

He kept adjusting his sculpture to fit the stone of the mountain, removed 90% of the rock with dynamite, created a 12 to 1 scale with his model that was proportionately equal to men 465 feet tall, did the fine carving with mini jack hammers handled by men suspended in midair to finish the facial features, and came up with the idea of leaving a 20-inch protrusion in the center of each eye to serve as the pupil and reflect the sun. How ingenious he must have been!

Billboards!

SEE THE BIG THUNDER GOLD MINE!

CHRISTMAS VILLAGE TURN HERE!

WHOA! DON'T MISS BEAR COUNTRY!

TWO NIGHTS RUSHMORE SHADOWS $29.95

Billboards suddenly disappeared when we crossed into a stretch of National Forest land. It was a pleasure to see the scenery, even if it was just trees, especially since the Black Hills are the highest mountains between the Rockies and the Alps.

"South Dakota defies the federal billboard laws by zoning the area around billboards as industrial," Andy explained.

"I don't care how they do it," I told him. "I think it's tacky and ridiculous. Why do the people of South Dakota allow it? Why don't they do something about it?"

"It's my guess that billboards attract attention of children who nag their parents to go to everything!" he suggested. "I wish there was a billboard for WalMart, so we could find a place to have our oil changed. We have covered 3,221 miles in 21 days."

"In Hill City we usually have snow by now," said the gas station attendant when we stopped to fill up. The temperature on the First Interstate Bank across the street read 79 degrees at 3:25 p.m. "We had a frost two nights ago, but it is supposed to be in the high 80's tomorrow. I don't know what is happening," he mused.

Nothing like global warming! I thought.

Animals Parade

The Badlands supports a wide variety of animal life. From a hornet on a leaf at the overlook to a bull buffalo grazing placidly, we took it all in.

Badlands...Not Bad at All

" There's actually water here," said Andy, pointing to a puddle along Window Trail in Badlands National Park.
"Oh wow!" I told him. "I'm glad I'm not in survival mode." The puddle was a couple feet of muddy clay, drying up after rain storms two or three days ago.
We hiked more than eight miles of back country trails in the 244,000-acre park, very glad to be carrying our own water as the 70 degree sun parched the land again.
We passed two younger couples, going different directions at junctions, and chatted with a family of five from Boulder at Notch Overlook. "We're home schooled," explained the little girl, "and today is our two-month anniversary of driving across the country."
Not long after, as we left the grassland of Medicine Root Trail and rounded a clay formation on the last mile of the Castle Trail, we spooked five bighorn sheep. What a treat to watch them dart up the side of the hill to the safety of their mesa. For them, this land is not "Bad" at all.
After dinner at Dairy Queen, Andy headed outside with his soft drink cup of ice cubes. "I'm going to share what is left with the plants in this dry land," he told me.
"I'm not so sure that's a good idea," I answered.
"Why?" he called back.
"Because I think those are artificial flowers."
Saturday morning we were up and out early on Castle Trail to Saddle Pass before the sun warmed the blustery 33-degree air. "I'm driving to the hike first," said Andy. "Then we will do the overlooks. That way the rattlesnake that the lady from Baltimore saw yesterday will still be sleeping."
Heading toward the trail head, we stopped for three small groups of pronghorn antelope, grazing near the road. A herd of American bison lolled on the other side of the park, near Robert's Prairie Dog Town. Oblivious to humans and the little dogs, the buffalo grazed contentedly. The prairie dogs, on the other hand, impolitely barked at us to leave.

Just a Minute

"So, to conclude our tour, do you think the Minuteman served its purpose?" asked Ranger guide Meaghan. as we left the missile enclosure at the Minuteman National Historic Site in South Dakota.
"Of course," I answered.
Another of the 21 tourists on the tour of Delta Site agreed. "Didn't you tell us it was MDS?" he asked. "If MDS means Missile Deterrent System and the Russians never fired on us in the 30 years of the Cold War, then our missiles served their purpose."
Dismantled in the early 1990's, the Minuteman was the first solid fuel missile, and it could be launched in less than five minutes. Two warheads had 90 megatons of explosives, or more than all the firepower exploded in World War II, including the two atomic bombs. And South Dakota alone housed 150 missiles.
The tour was fascinating, and guides Meaghan and Jack, knowledgeable and interesting. I almost didn't get to go, with an established limit of 18 and only one slot available. But the last minute Ranger Jack agreed to squeeze an extra adult tourist in each small elevator group.
Down, down, down we rode into the isolation chamber that served as the Minuteer Control Room. There for 30 years Air Force personnel would be sealed in for a 24-hour shift. Some of the Minuteers at Delta Site even decorated the lead door in red, white and blue. And Delta Site, one of five in South Dakota, was replicated in six other states.
Suddenly I felt safe.
"This was part of our history for 30 years," said Andy, "and almost no one even knows it was going on."