Black Hills of South Dakota

After leaving the Badlands, we headed west to the Black Hills. We set up our base camp in a beautiful campground outside the small town of Custer, where we planned to stay for a week while visiting the Black Hills. Our first full day in the Black Hills found us visiting Custer State Park. We had been told that this was a good place to see Buffalo, and Jo anxiously scanned the woods and fields as we drove towards the Visitors Center. She was ecstatic the first time she noticed a solitary bull sitting in a clump of trees alongside the road. Little did we know what was ahead. Not long after we turned onto the Wildlife Loop road through the park, we encountered our first herd of Buffalo. Jo was madly snapping away with her camera as we followed a small family group of Buffalo crossing the road ahead of us to rejoin the herd. While most of the buffalo were content to sit or graze passively, with the tourist in their cars only feet away, we noticed some repeated interaction between several sets of bulls on the edge of the herd. It appeared in each case that an older bull was exerting himself to keep a younger male away from his females. We were lucky enough to see two bulls go at it with all of the head butting and maneuvering we had heard about. Jo was successful in capturing on film pictures of the bulls, horns locked, hooves in the air in a cloud of dust. As we proceeded along through the wildlife loop road, we repeatedly saw small groupings of pronghorn antelope grazing on the prairie grass. We also passed colonies of prairie dogs who again showed their indifference to the passing cars while they scurried around outside their holes.
Later on, we encountered several wild burros/jackasses who were standing in the middle of the road begging for food. When tourists would stop their cars to take pictures, the burros would thrust their noses inside the car looking for handouts. Jo got lots of good pictures, but unfortunately for the burros, we had no food to share with them.