Custer State Park : The Great American Safari

Custer State Park, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is one of the best places in America for spotting lots of photo-ready animals: buffalo, antelope, big horn sheep, prairie dogs, deer... the list goes on

When the anonymous cowboy poet of Home on the Range wrote "Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam / Where the deer and the antelope play," he must have been thinking about

South Dakota's Custer State Park

(605-255-4515, www.sdgfp.info/Parks/Regions/Custer).

Custer State Park—73,000 acres of granite peaks, mountain meadows, sparkling lakes, and ponderosa pine–shrouded foothills—is tucked into the Black Hills of southwest South Dakota, just 20 miles south of Mt. Rushmore (and 28 miles from Rapid City) and 88 miles west of the weirdly eroded landscape of the Badlands.

Custer may only rate a "state park" ranking, but for my money it blows away half the national parks in the system. It's no great shakes in the hiking department (about a dozen trails ranging from one to 22 miles), but has some spectacular scenery, drop-dead gorgeous lakes, thrilling drives, and hands-down some of the best wildlife spotting in the entire country. In fact, a drive through the park is like a big game safari, American-style.

Antelope and coyote and buffalo, oh my!

I've been to more than 100 national parks, monuments, forests, etc., and I'll tell you right now: if you want to see the highest concentration and variety of impressive wild animals in the shortest period of time, take a drive through Custer—especially the 18-mile

Wildlife Loop Road.

Every time you come around a bend, there seems to be a

pronghorn antelope

grazing on the shoulder, a massive

buffalo

bull lazing by a creek, small stands of

whitetail or mule deer

nibbling grass in the shade, wooly white

mountain goats

scampering up a steep hillside, or a lone

coyote

loping through the grass near the entrance to Wind Cave National Park. Once, I jumped out of my car to snap a picture of Sylvan Lake and nearly stepped on a five-foot snake.

When I stopped to photograph some

Rocky Moutain bighorn sheep

(transplanted cousins to the now-extinct Audubon sheep that once roamed the park) picking their way up a steep hill in the sun-dappled shadow of pine and oak, I found myself standing in the middle of a

prairie dog

town. Its residents yipped and scolded me as they high-tailed it into their burrows to pop up and down, whack-a-mole style (which I thought was cute, until I remembered the little guys can carry the plague).

I saw all of those (except the bighorn sheep) on a single drive through the park; the bighorns I saw on a second visit (along with most of the others again). Just about the only big animal I didn't get a glimpse of in Custer was one of their 1,000

elk.

And we haven't even mentioned the

180 species of birds.

(If you stay at Custer Park Game Lodge, you're likely to get a

wild turkey

wake-up call, which sounds like someone strangling seagulls.)

But the animal you can see in Custer like nowhere else on Earth is the

American bison

. Custer State Park is home to one of the largest publically-owned buffalo herds in the world. Somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 buffalo roam free in the park, and tend to use the park's roads to migrate, making for possibly the most photographic traffic jams in America. Come fall, cowboys gather to

round up the herd

in one of the best glimpses into an authentic Wild West tradition that continues to this day (trust me; I got to help round them up in 2006).

The Needles: Scaling pinnacles of rock by car and by rope

Beyond the wildlife, what draws most folks to Custer is the vehicular thrill ride of

Needles Highway,

a 14-mile rolling, curving ribbon of road hairpin-turning and roller-coastering 6,400 vertical feet up past cathedral spires of rock and threading through tight slots and narrow tunnels bored through the mountainsides. To its north, beyond

Cathedral Spires

and

Little Devil's Tower,

looms

Harney Peak

—at 7,242 feet, the highest mountain east of the Rockies.

Driving past the most photographed of the rock pinnacles, the

Needles Eye,

I saw two old-timers rapelling past the 60-foot high/three-foot wide slit through the rock that gave it its name. I congratulated the intrepid climbers when they reached the bottom, and politely tried to find out how old they were. George proudly admitted to being 71; Pete wouldn't say, just that he was young enough to still be able to climb the Eye.

Age aside, I'm nowhere near talented enough to tackle something like the pinnacles, so when I wanted to strap on a harness and scramble up some rocks, I made my way to the end of the Needles Highway at scenic Sylvan Lake to hook up with Daryl Stisser.

Daryl is a guide with

Sylvan Rocks,

which runs climbs of the Needles, Mt. Rushmore, and Devils Tower, just over the Wyoming border (www.sylvanrocks.com; 3-hour "Discover Climbing" course $65, 6-hour basics courses from $150 per person).

The water reflected a puffy-clouded cobalt sky and the low cliff of rounded and time-smoothed boulders that formed the boundary of the far side of the lake. As we crunched along the path around the picture-perfect lake, I asked Daryl about the odd platform in the middle of the lake.

"Oh, that's to aerate the water." I looked at him, and he explained that the lake is so overstocked with fish for sportsmen that they have to artificially oxygenate the waters to keep the fish alive. I dunno; doesn't seem very sporting to me.

Where to stay in Custer

Talk about wildlife; When I stayed at Custer's

Stockade South campground

in the summer of 2006 (one of

seven campgrounds in the park

), in order to get from my tent to the restrooms I had to navigate a Beatrix Potter tableau of nibbling deer, twittering birds, and hopping bunny rabbits. Custer campgrounds cost $13–$15 per night (except French Creek Natural Area, a bargain $2 per person per night).

You can reserve campgrounds at 800-710-2267 or www.campSD.com.

On another visit, in the dying days of September, I left the tent at home to chack up in relative style at the

Custer Park Game Lodge

(605-255-4541 or 800-658-3530; www.custerresorts.com; $95–$160), a log cabin mini-mansion atop a grassy rise at a curve in the park's main road. The lodge served Calvin Coolidge as a summer White House, and now rents rooms ($95–$135), wings of nice motel units ($125–$185), and a scattering of cabins (nos. 4–9 are set back from the road in an oak grove along a creek; avoid nos. 1–3, right on the road; $110–$125 regular cabin, $155–185 housekeeping cabin). The dining room ain't bad (picture a wood-panelled 1950s den, only filled to the rafters with stuffed pheasants and antler trophies), but for a quickie meal I recommend a buffalo burger and Killian's at the hotel bar.

There are three other lodges in the park. The

Blue Bell Lodge

(605-255-4531 or 800-658-3530, www.custerresorts.com; $175–$195 cabin, $125–$195 housekeeping cabin) is a log cabin with a dude ranch theme arranged around churckwagon cookouts and trail rides. The other two overlook lovely lakes: the 1937