Chanute, Kansas Artists Alley Festival

We arrived in Chanute, KS Thursday for our service appointment Monday.  We arrived early as there's a city festival Saturday and we want to ensure we have a site in the city park.  We went to the beer tent, as you can see, and helped celebrate whatever was going on at the festival!

On the road.overnighting in Sidney & Wilbur, Nebraska

We are now in travel mode to Chanute, KS.  Our first overnight was at a Cabelas store's campground in Sidney, NE.  We had made reservations but this is the most screwed up campground we have ever been in.  All did work out OK but this place has no idea what is going on and it's a very nice campground!

 

Our next stop was in Wilbur, NE at a nice city park at an American Legion.  BIG park with lots of room.  There are four of us here now.  Ourselves plus Jeff & Susan, Stan & Connie, and Steve & Susy.

Buffalo roundup at Custer State Park

Closer and closer they come.

Far away but getting closer, horseback riders and trucks are used to round them up and drive them.

There are two viewing areas, looks like they rounded up people, got them all fenced in real good! 

Here's the gang that sat still for an hour and chatted after the roundup, we were allowing traffic to clear out as there was only one two lane road for several miles to our viewing site.
The bottom picture is the sunrise, that's right, I was there for a sunRISE.  Once we were close (5 or 6 miles away) to the viewing area the traffic just stopped.  It started out dark and the sun came up while we were waiting.  We had to wait about a half hour for the gates to open.  so we could drive the rest of the way.  The entertainment was a pair of antelope on a nearby ridge getting it on.
We are glad we went but disappointed, we expected well over a thousand buffalo but there were only about 300.  There was dust but no thunder as the pamphlet led us to believe.  Bummer, but it's off the bucket list.

Final happy hours at Hermosa

We are getting ready to leave Hermosa and the weather had a cold spell for a couple days then it warmed back up.  The wind has been pretty steady though.  When it gets into the high 30s and low 40s at night it's tell us to GET THE HECK OUTTA HERE.

Custer area ride & Mammoth Site

The first shot is Chief Sitting Bull, and I will admit that I am more impressed with that mountain than Mt Rushmore.  The fourth shot is of Rapid City as we approached it from the south.  The two in the middle just shows what the area looks like.
We were scouting out a back entrance to the buffalo roundup but it didn't pan out so we continued on to Hot Springs and the Mammoth Site where 26,000 years ago woolly mammoths were trapped in a pool along with other critters of the time.  Their bones were discovered in 1974 during excavations for a housing development.  The site is now enclosed and the dig continues, it is estimated that they have only gone down about a quarter of the way to the bottom of the pit.
These animals were VERY big, I was impressed when standing under a skeleton.

Deadwood, Lead & Spearfish Canyon

Today we went about an hour north to Lead to checked out the huge 8000 foot deep Homestake gold mine.  George Hurst bought it for $70K in 1877.  It produced 40 million ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver.  Big bucks!  It's been closed since 2002 but we got a good view from an observation deck.  There are also deep shafts going underground.  The nifty large house is across the street from the mine. 

We then went to Deadwood, 5 miles if that, and hiked up to Calamity Jane's and Wild Bill's graves to pay our respect.  Boy, this is hilly country.

We returned home via the Spearfish Canyon and I'd have to say it was a spectacular drive with the trees turning yellow and gold.

Bye bye Custer, hello Hermosa

Here's a group picture of most all the Custer, SD rally attendees.  We have now moved 22 miles through Custer State Park to Hermosa where we'll spend 9 nights (at a campground half the price of Custer) waiting for the annual Custer State Park buffalo roundup.  They do this to ensure the buffalo are healthy, branded and reduce the herd to about 1000 which the park can support over the winter.  The animals that are removed are sold to private buffalo ranches in the US and Canada.