Black Hills - last chapter of this part of a trip

I really enjoy creating these travel logs of our trip this summer. It gives me a chance to go back and recall what a wonderful time we had, in rereading my diary discovering some of the details that I forgot.

In my last chapter we went to Devil’s tower in 104* heat. The drive “home”, we had come to think of the “Silver Dog House” where ever he is parked as home, was long and tiring. We drove south through very flat range land in Wyoming to Newcastle then east back into South Dakota. As we came east the late evening sky was dark with heavy clouds and we could see lightning ahead of us. We drove through Jewel Cave national Monument and made a note that it was a place to see next time we came to the Black Hills. We had fallen in love with the area and decided we wanted to see more – there was so much of the Black Hills we had not seen. As we drove through Custer we hit the tail end of the thunder storm with wet streets and sprinkles on the windshield. At Custer we turned back north and passed the Crazy Horse Memorial, which we could see from the road, with the completed face lighted. We decided that was out look at Crazy Horse. We arrived back at the trailer well after dark, tired and glad of the thunderstorm, which had cooled the air to comfortable sleeping temperatures. If you look back at some of my earlier posts the map of the Black Hills is there to see our route.


The next day was Sunday, a day to do mundane stuff, like house keeping. I was even able to use my cell phone to call home from Hill City where we went to do laundry and grocery shopping. On the way back after finishing our errands we passed a flock of mountain sheep ewes with one lamb, right on the shoulder of the road. Sunday afternoon we also tried a swim in the reservoir on which the campground is located. We only managed to wade out to our waists. We are spoiled by Michigan's clear sandy bottomed lakes.

Another treat that I had while in the campground in the Black Hills was to add a Townsend's Solitaire adults and juvenile to my birding life list. It was the unusual appearance of the plumage of the juvenile that caught my attention at first. He is a dark bird with what looks like scales all over his chest and back. He is heavily spotted with white which makes the feathers look like they have dark edges. I later saw him with the solid gray adult and was able to see the white outer tail feathers on the birds as they were fly catching among the Ponderosa pines at our campsite. The Solitaire is a small thrush who is related to Blue Birds and Cat Birds. Here is a link to a site from the Seattle Washington audubon that includes a recording of their song. And Another that has more complete information from Cornel Lab of Ornithology

Monday morning fairly early we broke camp and headed west for the southern Bighorm Mountains.