An Epic Farewell

Today is our last full day here, tomorrow is travel home day. We had no real plan except to have our morning coffee while driving the Wildlife Loop one last time. Then maybe we would do the Prairie Loop hiking trail and head back to the rental to figure out the rest of the day.

Our maybe two hour excursion lasted six hours. That six hours included 5 bison road stops, 3 sightings of baby bisons, 2 hikes, a mountain goat, two rock climbers and a drive on the part of the Needles Highway we hiked on Monday (because on Monday it was closed due to the snow).

First we will start with all the bison pictures. One bison licked our car, while another licked someone else’s car. We watched a bison try to back kick a car and missed by inches. The baby biosn were so far in the distant, no good picture with an iphone could capture the babies.

We think we saw 100s of bison today.

Next up, a short little hike on the Prairie Trail, a little over two miles. Some hikers see bison, elk, coyotes, deer on this hike. We saw turkeys in the valley. It was a great little hike though.

After that hike, we drove some more, stopped some more and finally made it to Needles Highway, going on the part that was closed on Monday due to snow. We stopped at Cathedral Spires and thought why not do the hike? Good thing we did. We had our first mountain goat encounter and watched two guys rock climb a spire.

Next we came to the section of the Needles Highway we had hiked on Monday. We both commented how we liked hiking it better than driving it.

Here are some photos from Monday to compare.

We made a brief stop at Sylvan Lake, but no more hiking…so tired.

We returned to the rental to have lunch and thought we might go out again. After an hour at the rental, we didn’t have the energy to go out anymore.

Today was an epic farewell to a great trip to South Dakota.