We’ve had quite a few adventures since I last wrote. Probably the only one that I’ll have time to
write about tonight is the Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup. (Yes, we know they are technically called bison,
but it's a local thing, so when in Rome , right?) The last Monday of every September a bunch of
cowboys & girls ride out into the park and collect all the female and all
the new young buffalo and drive them into corrals to be vaccinated, branded and
get their annual check-ups. There are 2
public viewing areas to watch them come running over the hills into the
pastures and every year more and more humans come.
My friend and I decided that we wanted to be some of
those humans who experience the roundup. So we got up at 4:30 am (yep, you read
that right) 4:30 AM to get all the kids bundled up and into the cars and on the
road by 5:00. The parking lots opened
at 6:15, but we were in line by 5:50. It
was a 3.5 mile line of cars and the sun wasn’t even up yet!!!
As soon as we were parked we RACED out to find a good
viewing spot and then we plunked our chairs and blankets down and waited 4
HOURS for the buffalo to run by. Yes
this was all part of the plan, to get a decent spot you’ve got to get there
ridiculously early. We were surprised
that we were about the only ones crazy enough to be out there with kids, most
of the folks looked like they were retired, which I guess makes sense since it
is always on a Monday morning when everyone else should be at work or school.
We were prepared with breakfast, books, binoculars, colored
pencils and lots of scratch paper. There
were 7 kids altogether, ranging from 2 years old to 9, and they were all
incredibly well behaved. We took a
couple of walks to get the wiggles out.
They were all super excited about the ginormous grasshoppers that were
giving each other piggyback rides! We
had a really great buffalo drawing contest.
I think they were all just really thrilled to be skipping school and
hanging out together.
There may have been more humans there than buffalo! This is what we could see of the south viewing area.
We had heard that when the buffalo are
approaching you are supposed to feel the ground shaking before you can hear or
see them. Well maybe you need to be in
the south viewing area for that, because we never really felt it. It was cool to see the clouds of dust and all
that life rushing over the crest of the hills, but I think we moms had built
it up a little too much in our heads.
Binoculars were a must.
Thank goodness for 10x optical zoom!
Nice touch with Old Glory riding along side.
About as close as the herd came to us.
The parking lots were closed for another hour or 2 after the
herd had passed and gotten into the pastures to make sure they had all the
animals contained. So we passed the time
by walking down to the pastures to get a closer look at the big old brutes and
the cute little ones.
J thought it was so funny that the buffalo could stick their tongues up their noses.
All the kids LOVED
watching the buffalo in the pastures, except for AJ . . . He would pretend to BE a buffalo. . .
We still had some more time to kill before we packed back into
the cars so we let the kids climb around in the trees along the side of the
road for a while.
Wouldn’t you know it,
when we asked them what was their favorite part of the day, it was climbing in
those trees. We could have slept until a
normal hour, let the kids go to school and then driven to any random clump of
trees and they’d have had as much fun!
But I’m glad we did it and now I’m curious if the other viewing area is
better. So maybe when M retires we
will go check it out.
3 comments:
I've always wanted to do that, but the early rise, and waiting and taking the kids out of school stops me....SOOO was it worth it? And would you do it again?
Great pics by the way...it's like I was there!
Wow! That looks like so much fun!
That is so cool! And it always seems to be the case that they enjoy the simplest part, isn't it?
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