Chapter 9, Mammoth Site, 2026

After visiting Custer State Park, our next adventure took us to an attraction that our friend Dave Murlin told us about after reading our previous Blogs.  Dave told us that a place called Mammoth Site was a close day trip away and that the trip would be well worth it.  We had never heard of this place before and decided to go check it out.

On this location in 1974, a new housing development was supposed to be built. During the site preparation, a bulldozer was working when the operator saw a stark white object protruding from the fresh dirt that had been scraped by the bulldozer.  The dozer operator examined the white object and realized that it was some type of bone and stopped excavation while he notified the property owner that there was something unusual at the Site.

After the initial discovery, a paleontological dig of the site commenced.  What they discovered, was absolutely unbelievable, and turned out to be the largest concentration of Mammoth remains in the world. As the exploration continued, it was decided they should build a structure over the site to preserve it, as well as prevent damage from the harsh winter weather conditions.

Once inside, we bought tickets and watched a video that described how so many bones became trapped here.

We bought a selfie stick to use on this trip and we are still trying to learn how to use it.  Sometimes, when we review our pictures, after our trip, we find out we haven't quite mastered it yet.

We are going to keep trying though.

The video explained that this site was once a large, steep sided sinkhole, and that, after the sinkhole was formed, a warm water spring filled the hole. This warm water promoted the growth of vegetation around the edges and drew the large animals to the site to feed. As they waded out into the warm water, they would then tumble into the deep pool, and because of the steep, slippery muddy sides, they were unable to climb back out, and eventually drowned, sank to the bottom, and over thousands of years were covered over with sediment and preserved.

You may have noticed a small elephant with a QR code on it in the lower right hand corner of the previous picture.

They have these QR codes scattered around the dig, and by pointing our camera at the code, we were able to play an audio description of what we were seeing. Click on the link below and you will be able to listen to the description of what we are looking at.

Click HERE to listen to the description of this stop on the tour.

The amount of bones that they discovered was amazing.

 

 

We wondered how this could have happened and why there were so many bones in this one spot.

As we walked around the sinkhole, we continue to see amazing collections of bones. It must've really been a thrill to participate in the removal of the sediment, revealing the bones one after another. 

To hear a description of the previous video, click HERE.

To hear the description of the previous video, click HERE..

 

 

  

To hear a description of the following picture, click HERE

 

 

To hear a description of the following picture, click HERE.

 

We then moved to the other end of the dig.

Hear about the following video, click HERE.

 

We also discovered that Suzie is not older than dirt!

 

Beside finding  the remains of Mammoths, they also found numerous other animals, including bears.  We didn't know that there was such a wide variation in the size of bears, but this exhibit helped demonstrate the wide variety. 

  The display of their skulls removed from the dig reminded us that we don't want to mess with bears. 

 

 

 

After we left the mammoth site, we took a different route back to our RV park, again, through Custer State Park.  This took us past Wind Cave National Park.

 

 We decided that since we have never been there before, we better take the little side road and see what it was all about. It turns out that you have to be there about 8 o'clock in the morning in order to reserve a position for the underground tours, and they were sold out for the next two days so we continued on our way into and through Custer State Park.

 

It started to rain lightly, but it was still beautiful.

 

We came across several more herds of buffalo, and they had lots of babies.
 

  They owned the roads and you just had to wait until they got out of the way.

 

That was our last day at Custer State Park, but there was still one more day to go. We still had to visit Mount Rushmore.

 

Hope you enjoyed this and we will try to keep more coming when we have time. It seems like we stay so busy exploring that there's not much time left in the day to prepare these blog chapters, but we will keep them coming when we can.   

 

Tom and Suzie
 

 

 

Chapter 8, Custer State Park, South Dakota 2026

 After leaving the Sturgis area, we drove to Hermosa, South Dakota where we set up at the Heartland RV park.  We would use this as our base of operations while we visited the many attractions south of Rapid City.

It's a beautiful 30 minute drive from our RV park to the entrance to Custer State Park.

Custer State Park is set up into a loop drive so that you enter at one end and exit somewhere else and so you are constantly seeing new sites.  The scenery is just spectacular, and quite varied, even if you don't see any wildlife.

 Shortly, after entering the park, we began to see Buffalo (Bison for you purists) and other wildlife.   In previous visits, this is about as close as we ever got to the Buffalo and they would usually be in one section of the park.

On this visit, just about around every corner, there was another herd of buffalo. They were everywhere and included large numbers of adults and many new babies.

It looks like we are pretty close to this buffalo and that's because we were and we didn't like it. There was really no other way to continue down the road without going past the buffalo. 

The reason we didn't like it is because on prior visits to this park, we've had an opportunity to talk to some of the Rangers that work at the park. They were driving pickup trucks.  

The reason for our conversation with the Rangers was that we noticed that there weren't any un-dented panels on their trucks and we wondered how they could have run into something or bent all of the sheet metal on their trucks.  During the course of their duties, every once in a while, one of the buffalo would ram their trucks, and that's what caused all of the dents.  

For that reason, we were very nervous about driving close to the buffalo, but it turns out, there was no way to avoid it. The good news is, we did not have any close encounters of the worst kind.

We saw lots of other wildlife along the way, including these antelope.

We stopped at Stockade lake and had a picnic lunch.  It was cool and breezy. There were lots of people fishing along the bank.

There was even wildlife here to watch while we ate.  Geese and their babies were all over the banks of the lake.

There were also several prairie dog towns along the road.  The prairie dogs were scurrying everywhere and were fun to watch.  They would scurry into their burrows and then pop back up again and look around.  They really blend into the surrounding terrain, and often, you can't tell whether you're looking at a rock or a prairie dog in the distance.

As we came around one corner, we found a herd of donkeys that were working the cars that were driving by.  They would walk down the middle of the pavement, right toward the front of your car.  It was obvious that they knew that this would force you to stop, and then they could come closer looking for a handout.

As soon as one of them would take his best shot at a handout, he would move on, and another one would block the road and try again.

It was a very interesting drive through the park and we were amazed at how many buffalo herds we saw.

When they would decide to walk on the road, there wasn't anything we could do but follow along.  They did not seem to be afraid of the car, and we were just hoping that they wouldn't attack.

There were other interesting things to see in the park besides the wildlife.  In the next video, you will see numerous blown down trees. These are not little twigs, but great big fat trees that were snapped in half by high winds.  They were in clumps all around the park, but there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why some trees got blown over and others did not.

Right at the edge of the park, we came across Gordon Stockade, which is a refurbished settlement. As harsh as the climate is here, at least, in the wintertime, this must've been a really tough way to live.

It would have been a lot of work to make these roof pieces. They are interlocked like Spanish tiles.

The stockade was located right next to French Creek so at least they had a water supply.  French Creek is where the first Gold in the Black Hills was located and was the beginning of the gold rush here.

After leaving Custer State Park, we went to the small town of Custer.  The first thing you see coming into town is a giant wooden buffalo at the Bearded Buffalo Resort.

Then came the typical downtown area with lots of touristy junk stores.

When we left Custer, we headed home and drove past the Crazy Horse Monument that is being carved out of the side of a mountain.  It is huge.

This project was started in 1948 and the original sculptor has since died.  5 of his 10 children still work on the project but there is no estimated completion date.  They have a long way to go!

It was so late in the day that we did not have time to visit there, but I have since gone online and found better pictures of the sculpture.

This is what the finished sculpture is supposed to look like.

It takes real vision to be able to figure something like this out.

The sculpture’s final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet high. If completed as planned, Crazy Horse will tower over Mount Rushmore (the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high).

Click HERE for a link to details about the Crazy Horse Monument

Custer State Park is an amazing place to visit and we hope that you have an opportunity to come here sometime and enjoy the wildlife and other amazing sites.

Tom & Suzie