in South Dakota. I found some at Bear Country USA, I also found a bobcat, elk and reindeer. This and a trip around wildlife loop was what we decided to do the first day of the Sturgis Bike Rally. (Unfortunately, the rally was quite rainy this year.) The weather started off great in the morning but by the early afternoon, we had strong winds and heavy rain. You can imagine me riding around in my chair going please don’t start, please don’t start raining while I’m exploring. the area that you can get up close to the smaller animals. But I am getting ahead of myself.
We started out encountering the burros, but they were only in the rearview mirror. I think we had also run out of carrots, so it is ok that we only saw them out the mirror. We were more on the hunt for the buffalo. We found them off one of the gravel roads far enough away from the roar of the motorcycles.
So, up the gravel road we head and see buffalo spread out all over the place. Once you come around a curve the whole expanse of green opens up and when it is filled with buffalo the feeling for me is peaceful and awe inspiring. I did enjoy the interaction of some of the bulls as they are getting ready to rut and claim a cow for their own. We even had some of the younger bulls play fighting check out the video. Here is also a photo of the start of a stand off.
I find such enjoyment in just watching these animals here are a few more photos. The first photo is of a cow bellowing at first, I thought it was a bull. I then realized that she was wanting her calf to come home. This is what you see in the second photo. My thought was Lassie come home. The third photo is a tombstone memorial for a baby who died in 1902. The bottom row shows a calf and a cow just hanging near the side of the road.
Now onto those bears. We’ve been to Bear Country before and enjoyed it. This time on top of driving through and seeing the animals from the car I had my chair, and I could get out and see some of the babies and smaller animals. The drive started out with the Rocky Mountain elk there were a couple of nice racks.
Reindeer are up next on the drive around the park we were lucky to catch them finishing up a daily bath. Roy has perfect timing as always. Just click the picture to play the video. We followed them until they decided to get off the road.
Around a few more bends we come upon the big horn sheep. It was a little warm for these animals today so they did not seem to be that active which is ok. We continued on through the park and drove right by two mountain goats, lounging on the cool rocks.
We made our way around to the bears. I have to say I am glad it did rain for them later in the afternoon because with all that fur they looked extremely hot. Here is one trying to get toe jam out of his fur and doing it in some cool water.
After the bears I got my chair out and headed for the small animals and the cubs. All of the bears at Bear Country were born there. The cubs are taken from the mothers after about 8 weeks and are then bottle fed by staff for another 6 to 8 weeks. I saw a badger, bobcat, raccoon and then fell in love with this little black bear cub.
I spent about ten minutes watching and taking pictures of him and the tree he was up in. Check out the video of him climbing down.
These are some of the antics of the cubs who seem to be enjoying life.
I went back to the bears and saw the little black bear in the water and this is my favorite photo from that day.
I had to hurry back to the car because it looked like the clouds were going to open up and let out a bunch of water. At least my timing was perfect I got everything put back into the car right before the bad weather happened. This year I will have to state beyond any doubt this has been the strangest year for weather.
On the Road with Buki-6 