Overall, today was a pretty leisurely day, which was nice compared to the whirlwind of the previous 6 days. Kevin left at about 7am this morning to head back to Iowa and work, leaving me without a solid agenda moving forward, several gigabytes of photos that I’ve taken and not culled, processed and uploaded yet and a book that I’d started the previous days. I decided to tackle this in order of importance and once I set my book down, finished, at 1:30 in the afternoon, it was time to call AT&T and cancel the service in my old apartment which I’d forgotten about until today.

Half an hour on hold with AT&T left me with a pretty decent plan and my next stop will be Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado instead of my prior plan to head for Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Satisfied with my progress so far for the day, I headed a few miles north to drive the Needles highway inside South Dakota’s Custer State Park ($5 entrance fee for a week pass, good at any SD state park).

It was definitely an interesting drive, I’ve got a decent prong-horn photo lying about on a compact flash card now along with a photo of a mule deer that might turn out reasonably okay. This whole trip however, I haven’t gotten any bird photos. In fact, the only birds I can even recall seeing are 2 brace of vultures at the Badlands. Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. Oh, and of course I’ve got what I hope will be some neat photos of the rock formations along the highway.

Like about half the nights since I’ve gotten to South Dakota, it’s been raining again. Right now I’m sacked out in the car attempting to work on photos while I’m waiting to see if the rain will slacken up enough to pitch my tent tonight or if I’ll be spending a night in the Jeep for the first time.

Travel Distance: 65 miles