WHITNEY'S TOUR GUIDE SERVICE

The rain came down about midnight and stormed until this morning.  By the time we finished breakfast the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.  

Custer was our destination to see Hank and Joyce.  There was a lot of talking as we hadn't seen them since spring.  It was so good to see them and their beautiful home.  We also met Ruby and Freckles.  

Hank and Joyce showed us Custer State Park.  We drove through part of it on our way to their place but we saw nothing compared to what they showed us.  

Our first encounter was prairie dog hill and then over the next hill we saw burros.  They weren't afraid of the cars and came right over to people in hopes of some food.  





One burro looked like he wanted to hop into the back of a pick up truck.  He almost chased the truck when it drove away.



Hank and Joyce were explaining to us how the buffalo round up worked as we passed the corrals.  Right past the corrals we saw this sight.

Then the herd started coming towards us.

They came closer and closer.....

And closer....

And closer.....

This one had horns that went down.

There were many red baby calves.

And then they crossed the road.....I stayed in the car while Bill took all the photos. He took over 100 photos of the buffalo.  

Time for lunch.  

Our lunch stop included buffalo burgers.  After lunch Hank drove up the Needles Highway which was completed in 1922.  It is a 14 mile road that takes approximately 1 hour to drive.  

This was one of the narrow tunnels.  

Every turn had one beautiful sight after another.

It is such a shame that the pine trees have been damaged by the mountain pine beetle epidemic.  

Hank and Joyce Whitney; Bill and Jan

Can you tell how much fun we were having?

Can you see the eye of the needle?

From one of the pull offs we could see Hank and Joyce's house.  I have no idea how many miles away it was, but it was a long way.  

The tunnels were very very narrow.  

This is Sylvan Lake.  There is a mile trail that circles the lake.  There were people sun bathing on the rocks, fishing, and using the paddle boats.  The lake area definitely gets used a lot.  

We took a nice walk around the lake and some of it was in narrow places with big rocks overhead. 

Check out the rock over their heads.  

And to reward ourselves for the long walk what better than ice cream.  

Bill was like a kid in a candy store with all the wildlife.  Look at the size of the horns on these long horn cattle. 

In these trees were blue heron nests.  This was an island in Legion Lake. 

We'd been gone all day and it was getting late.  We decided to postpone our trip to Luntz Pizza shop for another day. 

Thank you again, Hank and Joyce, for a memorable day. 

As we were leaving town, Hank called to say there was a weather warning for a bad storm with tennis ball size hail in Hermosa.  The sky was black to the east of us.  

As we were driving back through the park, Bill started to put the camera away and he said "we saw all the buffalo we're going to see".  Just around the bend we saw this bull. 

There are many more photos and it was very difficult to pick out a few.  It was a wonderful day and to make it even better, we had only wet roads and no rain the rest of the way back to our RV park.  As we parked we saw water running down the road.  Our neighbors said they had tennis ball size hail just a few minutes before we returned.

Turtle Safely.........