We left Custer State Park this morning, after camping 2 nights there.
We had a great campsite, a shady spot right on the banks of a stream – the only thing we could hear after we went to bed. (Tonight, we in a commercial campground right next to I90 – 11 pm on a Saturday night and there is still some traffic noise.)
Today was the first day since the 3rd that we didn’t see any buffalo (American bison). And, of course, in Custer State Park, we saw plenty of people gaga over the buffalo.
The guy in the second photo was trying to get closer and closer to the buffalo – very slowly, very carefully and very stupidly.
We were in our car, stopped and I wasn’t planning on moving until this guy got away from the buffalo. A fellow in a white car behind us came up and asked if we could move over so they could drive through. I told him, “No” and that I wasn’t moving because I didn’t want to spook the animals and make it more dangerous for the people that were way too close to the buffalo.
Well, the impatient guy actually asked the fellow out there to move, telling him that I wasn’t going to drive through with him there.
Fine. The guy moved and I drove through the herd of buffalo.
That’s right. I drove forward slowly, just like I would if I were trying to drive through a herd of cattle or sheep. And just like cattle or sheep, these big critters just moved out of the way – and the guy in the white car who was so impatient stopped in the middle of the herd so he or his family could get some pictures.
The dark red on our route is from Fishing Bridge RV Park in Yellowstone to Sitting Bull Campground in the Bighorn National Forest, west of Gillette, Wyoming. The next segment is from Sitting Bull Campground to Game Lodge Campground in Custer State Park, South Dakota. The last segment is today’s journey to Sioux Falls, SD.
I’m certainly glad that we only witnessed fools around critters this trip and am most definitely glad we didn’t see any tragic results, though the possibilities were there.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Stupid is right. If he got any closer you may have gotten photos of a charging buffalo.
I am still following… way behind. I have now caught on the last six posts. How come stupidity comes out when humans are near large animals?
Rose – I had my camera ready — just in case –, but was hoping not to get any photos of a real bison-human interaction.
Grannymar – I don’t know. We talked some park volunteers that day and one of them told us that a little earlier that been a lady walking after – chasing – a bison calf and it looked like she was trying to touch it. Imagine the mama bison getting defensive of he calf.
Hi Mike,
What are these people thinking? And to get you involved so they can get closer is asinine. You’d think they’d follow “the rules”, but maybe they don’t think the rules apply to them.
I don’t think he necessarily wanted to get closer. I think he was in a hurry to get somewhere or that he was just an impatient sort of person.
Foolish confidence and a desire to see how close to danger one can get is a disease that people all over the world seem to thrive on. I have just come from a trip to the South where I met a foolish young man who went too close to an elephant in a sanctuary and was taken by the elephant in his trunk and hurled away to about ten feet. He proudly showed me his taped chest to show his broken ribs!
Love all your buffalo photos. Those people are foolhardy. I’m surprised the park doesn’t fence them off.
Ramana – From what I’ve seen of human nature, that doesn’t surprise me.
Dot – Much of the west is still “wild” to some degree. This state park is a nature preserve to preserve things as they were and as they were for future generations. The only fences we really saw were around the park to keep the bison in the park, between sections of the park for herd management and around the campground we were in to keep bison out of the campground. Washington DC is 68.3 square miles and this state park is 111 square miles.
A lot of the west is still “open range” where livestock roams free, even where there are highways.