Custer State Park near Custer SD July 21

Monday morning July 21, 2025 I was up at 6:30 am. We had full hook-ups at Big Horn View RV Campground so I was flushing our gray and black tanks and filling our fresh water tank because we wouldn’t have a water hook-up at Custer State Park, only electric, for our three-night stay.

It’s a wonderful way to start your day!

Custer State Park

We left Big Horn at 9 am and arrived at Custer State Park shortly after the noon check-in time. During the drive Cindy had been very excited after seeing a big buck deer with huge antlers lying under some trees and when we got closer to Custer State Park she saw a mountain goat.

I first brought Cindy to Custer State Park many years ago when I was deployed to South Dakota. She fell in love with all the animals (but especially the bison, her spiritual animal) on the Wildlife Loop. So, we’ve been back here three times as The Wandering Wetheringtons because it IS Cindy’s favorite place.

Legion Lake Campground

We like the Legion Lake Campground in the park so, as of yet, we haven’t even looked at any of the other campgrounds. But we DID try a new site in Legion Lake this time, toward the front of the campground, and it was a nice, level, asphalt site with 50-amp electric that would serve us well for three nights.

We decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Legion Lake Lodge Restaurant across the road from the campground. We went early and we were glad we did because it got very busy shortly after we arrived.

Later, just before sunset, we took Bella on a walk over to Legion Lake. We saw the same family of geese we had seen 6 weeks earlier and, oh my, how the two little goslings had grown! They were now almost as big as mom and dad.

Wildlife Loop

Tuesday morning we got an early start on the Wildlife Loop, arriving at 8 am.

The first thing we saw was a 200+ herd of bison coming down a hill to the road, so we pulled over.

Some of them came SO close to the truck that Cindy was weeping with joy at their proximity. Lots of video of them in the video and several photos in the album.

Then we saw a few of pronghorn sheep and at one point a momma with her three little baby pronghorns.

Next up was Cindy feeding the wild donkeys (the only wildlife you can feed in the park) because this time we DID remember to bring the carrots. She was mobbed, lol! And we saw two baby donkeys with the herd as well, but the momma donkeys did NOT want you getting too close to their babies.

Finally, a staple of our visits to the Wildlife Loop; prairie dogs! Cindy finds them to be incredibly cute and if they didn’t carry the plague she’d hug the little buggers!

The rest of the day was spent resting and relaxing.

Hail!

Wednesday was mostly another relaxing day. It began raining in the late afternoon. After dinner, we drove into Custer (the town) to fuel up Voyager and to fuel up ourselves with dessert at the Purple Pie Place. Cindy had blackberry pie ala mode and I had cherry pie in the same mode.

We were going to drive the Wildlife Loop one more time, but it was still raining AND foggy AND, as we got to the higher elevations there was hail! It looked like snow on metal roofs and bridges and the edge of the road, but it was hail. We tried driving a couple of miles on the loop but the weather was so bad that we decided to turn around and head back to the campsite.

It was a good thing Cindy had such a wonderful time seeing so much wildlife on Tuesday morning, because it just didn’t work it for the rest of the stay.

We spent the rest of the evening getting ready to leave the next morning and hit the sack early.

Thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.