July 21st Custer State Park

We pulled out of Horsethief Lake campground early in the morning and headed towards Custer State Park. After a brief stop in the town of Custer where we connected to the Internet to pay some bills we arrived at Center Lake Campground around 11:00am to find we had a large variety of sites to choose from. We selected a long, level site without much tree cover in loop A and set up camp for the next three days. We've learned over the past few weeks that tree cover really reduces the effectiveness of our solar panels so when we dry camp we try to select a site that has full sun. Lucky for us the weather has been cooler than normal at each of the places we've boondocked so being in full sun hasn't cause the inside of the trailer to over heat. In the afternoon we drove the Wildlife Loop Road where we viewed lots of mule deer, pronghorn (antelope) and prairie dogs. We were surprised that we didn't see any bighorn sheep or buffalo so we stopped at one of the park's visitor centers to inquire about the "position" of the bison and the ranger directed us to head over to the Iron Mountain Road loop as this was the last reported sighting of the herd. As soon as we pulled onto Iron Mountain Road the buffalo were everywhere! We laughed as we watched park rangers in a SUV with a large guard attached to the front of the vehicle herd a group of bison down the road. The rangers were trying to get the bison to move off the road in an effort to relieve the long traffic jam but they were not successful. We enjoyed slowly driving by these great beasts as they passed within inches of the sides of our truck and they could not have cared less about the lines of vehicles they needed to navigate around. I guess they are pretty use to cars and of course they have the right of way within the park. After we passed the buffalo herd we stopped at the State Game Lodge which is one of the parks historic lodges. The State Game Lodge served as the "Summer White House" for President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 and was also visited by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a few days in 1953. It is a beautiful stone and wood lodge surrounded by ponderosa pines and was well worth the stop. We enjoyed an adult beverage in the lodge's newly restored lounge before heading back to camp to prepare dinner. After dinner we walked the campground and then retired early as we were heading to Wind Cave National Park the next day.