Badlands Series (3): Wildlife in Bandlands and Wind Cave
6/20/21 US-China travel is tough since pandemic. I am like an CIA and investigate along which route to meet my family (hmm). My mom said “oh, it is too far for you to pick us up from Chicago” “hey, babe, we take whatever we can get!” Miss my family!! Such a luxury thing to meet them up nowadays …
Very cool to see wildlife in national parks! for example, I have seen bloody wolfs in Yellow Stone and black bear in Shenandoah! Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks (the two are only 1-2 hours drive away) are not famous for wildlife, but between the two, I saw quite a few kinds! Wind Cave National park has the world longest underground cave and is located in the black hills. From far away, the black hills are indeed looking amazingly dark. A limited amount of underground tour tickets are sold every morning 8 am in the Wind Cave visitor center. Every day 7am something, there is a long line outside the ticket office and the tickets are sold out at 8 or 9am. If you plan to visit the cool cave, you may consider camping in the wind cave so you can get up early enough to buy the tickets.
Buffalo (Tatanka): they are faster than people and very powerful. Park rangers advise people to leave them alone. Wind Cave National park has many many Buffalos and they are just chilling near the road. I saw ones in the badlands as well, but they are much further away. Wild buffalos were almost hunted to extinct at some point. These Tatankas are later introduced to South Dakota. They especially like the grass after burning. So the park actually burns down a part of the “black forest” on purpose to nurtrilize the grassland.
Prairie dogs: it is my first time to see prairie dogs. They dig many holes in prairies. So the farmers don’t like them. These holes are all connected undergrounds. There is a family of prairie dogs living near the entrance of Badlands national park for many generations. The store sells prairie dogs food so you can feed them (1$ a bag of peanuts). Some prairies dogs are brave and they chase you for peanuts. Some are shy and only hide at the entry of their holes and are ready to run away when you approach them. They open peanut shells impressively fast.
Big horn sheep: They are good looking and cool creatures. First time I saw them was in the Yellow Stone years ago. They were standing on very steep slopes.
Ground squirrels: they are very fast and live in the holes in the ground. Are you able to see him below?
Birds: there are many beautiful birds here, taking your binoculars! For example, see this beautiful Magpie. He belongs to the crow family, is very smart and can mimic people talking.
