Mississippi River Trip: Bison, bison everywhere. . .

And we could have had a drop to drink.  According to Larisa it poured rain and the wind rattled the tent and tarp all night.  I dunno.  I was sleeping. See how bright and chipper I look before our hike?

We woke up at sunrise to hit the Castle trail, hoping to beat the heat a little.  The trail starts near the disappointing Fossil Loop and heads towards the Door/Window/Notch area.  Technically the trail is only 5 miles, but we planned a larger hike by doing a 4 mile side trail called Medicine Root Loop.  The Castle is epic when you’re walking next to it, and the trail itself is fantastic.  You start off in the rocky hills, cross washouts and miniature canyons, and wind up on the prairie for the last couple of miles.  In the morning light the hills looked lovely and soft.  My favorite feature of the hike were the mud balls.  Apparently after a rain the strong winds can cause pebbles to roll.  The pebbles collect mud and more pebbles and eventually become large oblong boulders about the size of a couple of basketballs next to each other. To me they looked like brains lying in the sand…

We ate breakfast at the Door parking area and took a rest, then headed back.  The Medicine Root loop is all prairie, and it’s fantastic for the first mile or so.  After that it gets a little dull.  The wildlife doesn’t really abound out there, and despite all of the warning signs, we saw nary a rattlesnake all day long.  As a matter of fact, over the entire four miles we saw three birds and a rabbit.  Hopefully the park wildlife will continue to grow – if it does that will probably wind up being the best hike in the park.  We got back a little after noon and learned that we hadn’t done 10 miles, but 12.  The printed distances are out of date because a large rainstorm washed out much of the trail – the canyons we skirted in the morning used to be hills.  We were exhausted and decided that we’d earned lunch at the restaurant.  Then we hit the visitor’s center for the AC and the exhibits and headed back to camp.

It was packed!  For our first two nights the campsites were thinly populated, but tonight every spot has a tent on it, and some of the “extra” areas have tents as well.  The bison came through again and most of the campers started to freak out.  People ran to their cars, climbed on top of the picnic table shelters, and generally acted the fool.  Larisa and I took photos.  One thing did change though.

The “herd” is only five bison, headed by a big old bull with a bad leg.  Usually the skirted the campground edges or wandered in partway and left.  Tonight they decided to walk straight down the middle and exit by my and Larisa’s camp.  I was sitting on the picnic table with my camera and the old bull stopped maybe 20 feet away and looked at me for a while.  I could hear his breath, see the knots in his fur – it was a great experience.  I started to film him and talk about the campers around us freaking out and he … huffed for lack of a better word,  at me a couple of times.  I have to confess that I got a bit worried myself.  But afterwards he just ambled on and wandered away with the herd.

We decided that he was probably hoping to be fed, which is disappointing and frightening at the same time.  Disappointing because you shouldn’t feed the animals that the park is trying to reintroduce, and frightening because he’s an old bull with an injury and might have decided that polite huffing didn’t get the point across.  If someone did feed him, I hope they stub their toe in the shower on a cold morning someday as punishment.  We leave tomorrow for Rapid City and the Black Hills – our westward expansion continues.