Wind Cave National Park

“Here in SoDak we farm in the summer and drink in the winter.” This was a line from a bartender to my friend Doug on his work trip to Aberdeen, South Dakota. South Dakota is another state relatively unknown to a lot of people, and one that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting on a few occasions. On this particular park visit, I was renting an old farmhouse in the Black Hills for two weeks while working remote. It was an awesome place to hole up while working remote during a pandemic.

Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned pandemic, the namesake cave was closed to the public. So my exploration of the park was surface area only. The park is mostly rolling prairielands, and I loved all of the colors and wildlife located here. The yellows and greens of the prairie were colored a beautiful gold in the low light of the sun, while the blue sky was then transformed to combinations of blue, red, orange, and yellow. Prairie dog colonies, along with the occasional lone bison, showed life that exists out here on the prairie. And those were just the wildlife I saw in my short visit, which doesn’t include the other wildlife not visible such as elk, pronghorn, black-footed ferret, eagles, hawks, owls, falcons, and much more. If you want to see the old west before manifest destiny, this is one of the best places to do it.