Today we used the quite good wi-fi at our park to attempt to make air travel arrangements for our kids for our annual trip to Cabo San Lucas in November. Unfortunately, our mileage credits are with Alaska Airlines and their website is set up in such a way that making reservations, particularly for award travel, induces fury in stupid users like me. I was mostly unsuccessful for a good part of the morning on the kids’ travel but was able to book Peggy’s and mine. We paid full fare. Booking the award travel seemed impossible so we called Alaska and, not surprisingly, the girl on the other end was also flummoxed by her employer’s site and failure set in. Another session in the afternoon finally got the tix but Alaska prevented efficient use of my award mileage credits so I gave up only about $300 poorer.
Today we went back to Custer State Park again because the drive up to the park on SD-36 is just gorgeous, the east side of the park itself is filled with critters along with beautiful scenery and, best of all, our state park pass we bought last Friday is good for a week so entry today was free.
The drive up 36 starts right around the corner from our campsite at Heartland RV and wanders about 10 miles through pretty farm and ranch lands speckled with fantastic rock formations. The great scenery continues once within the park. Within about 5 miles of the entrance we spotted wild turkeys, pronghorn antelope and some more buffalo which are really bison. One enormous bison bull was strolling along the road unbothered by motorists because he could be. He was very large and healthy looking. A no-nonsense type of guy. We also pulled down some neat side roads with ample additional animals to see. They all look pretty chubby which is good because horrible winter is coming and scarce food will be available once snow covers everything. This place is pretty far north and at about 4000 foot elevation.
We returned from the park down 36 again but it all looked different because the light had changed. I think I could be pretty happy just driving up and down this highway every couple of hours; there is something changed each time we pass.