The next stop on our National Park hit parade was Wind Cave in South Dakota. During our planning phase we found out that the caves in the park would be closed for the summer months due to the park service replacing the elevator system which provides access to the caves.
Why they chose to undertake such a project during the busiest time of their year, we don’t know, but hopefully there was a good reason. Regardless, we were making a stop at the park, caves or no caves.
We arrived around 4:30 p.m. and we were immediately greeted by the second biggest attraction in the park, both literally and figuratively – a herd of 30 huge bison grazing peacefully on the prarie abutting the park road. There only 50 yards from our car were beautiful, big, brown bison enjoying a mid-afternoon snack as park guests looked on in amazement. What an openining site. Caves, what caves? Look at those bison.
We spent several minutes admiring the giants, which can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and Beth took numerous pictures, before we headed on to set up camp. The campground was very nice. It has a clean restroom with running water and flush toilets, ample drinking water, level sites, and shade. All in all, a very nice place to spend a couple of nights.
While we were setting up our tent, two park rangers stopped by to invite us to the evening ranger program. This evening’s topic was the park’s bison population. We told them if we got set up and finished dinner in time, we would be there. We finished everything in plenty of time to make the short walk to the amphitheater to hear about the plight of the herd.
Ranger Ryan spent almost an hour discussing the bisons’ fate, not only in the park, but in North America in general. It turns out that at one point, 40 million bison roamed the United States. This population was decimated by hunters and railroad companies expanding their lines, until at one point in the 1880s, there were less than 100 remaining. Thanks to some dramatic conservation efforts on the part of environmentalists and some sympathetic government officials, today the bison population has grown to almost half a million in the United States. A remarkable comeback for our beefy buddies. There is today’s history lesson. Since the caves are closed, we have to talk about something, so it may as well be bison.
The following morning, Beth and I decided to hike the 6 mile Centennial Trail, which meanders around the praries and hills of the park. It is a very pleasant hike, passing through prarie dog towns full of the playful little animals who barked at us as if that was going to scare us away, as well as along a winding creek, and cool wooded areas.
At one point, after climbing a very steep section of the trail, Beth asked me to stop. She wanted to see the map. As she studied it, she became convinced we were heading on the wrong trail. Even though the signs we had been following had the correct trail number, it appeared that our trail split into two sections. The section we wanted to follow continued back to our parking area, whereas the other section joined up with a longer trail that traveled for 110 miles through South Dakota. Beth was sure we had taken the wrong section. Since she is the skilled navigator and map reader between the two of us, I told her I would go wherever she thought best. She had us turn around and retrace our steps to where the trail split. It was the right move. When we reached the split in the trail, we could see we had in fact taken the section that would have taken us 110 miles through South Dakota! Fortunately, Beth heeded the still, small voice in her head that was telling her something wasn’t right, or we would still be walking on that trail now. Thank God for watching over us.
As we continued on the correct trail, we rounded a corner and Beth came to screeching halt, and then turned and ran back toward me, as she had almost literally run into a bison that had blocked the trail forward. “There’s a big bison on the trail,” she managed to get out as I looked at her bewildered by her actions. I took a few steps forward and sure enough, a 2,000 pound bison was 15 feet in front of me, blocking our way, too close for comfort. Like Beth, I retreated to a place of safety further from it. We were at a standoff. We couldn’t go forward, and we certainly weren’t going to retrace our steps in the opposite direction, so we just waited for the hulk of bison meat to decide he was ready to move on. After about 3 minutes, he slowly moved off of the trail and into a wooded area about 25 yards from us. We took advantage of the window of opportunity and high-tailed it pass the beast into safety. You really haven’t lived until you stare down a giant bison in your path.
The rest of the hike was uneventful. We did see several bison roaming the hills around us, but they were all a safe distance and caused us no concerns or problems. So at the end of the day, we avoided the 110 mile walk that we had no intentions of taking and we avoided being trampled by a huge bison. A pretty good day if I have to say so myself.
In all, we believe we saw more than 50 bison during our time at Wind Cave, which is about 10 percent of the 500 or so bison that call the park their home. Sure, it would have been nice to tour the caves, but we had already been to Carlsbad Caverns earlier in our trip, and Wind Cave probably wouldn’t match Carlsbad. Besides, we definitely got to see plenty of bison in their natural habitat and that certainly made up for the lack of caves and made for an interesting visit, no doubt.
Our time in Wind Cave was over. It had been a very nice stay, but it was time to pack up our belongings and continue on to more excitement. The Badlands awaited us. We were curious to see what the park had in store for us.