Posts tagged bison
Travel With Me: Yellowstone National Park (Day Three)
Travel With Me: Yellowstone National Park (Day Three)

We passed this turnout every day, as the route from Wapiti and the East Gate into the park took us through Sylvan Pass, which is in the Absaroka Range. This part of the park has one of the higher elevations that you drive through, at 8,524 feet above sea level, so it's naturally chillier, hence why these photos of the Sylvan Lake look like a winter wonderland even though it was in the sixties and seventies in the rest of the park. We saw a lot of cars from California stopped around here to get out and have snowball fights, but after six months of harsh Minnesota winter, I only stopped for the photo op. 

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Hiking, Nature, TravelHannah Schultzsylvan pass, sylvan lake, yellowstone national park, day three, turnout, tower fall, yellowstone river, lost lake loop, hike, hiking, petrified tree, Roosevelt lodge, employee, manager, ranger, trout lake, otter, bison, baby bison, calves, lamar valley, slough creek, wolf den, pups, bear, black bear, cub, mayComment
Wind Cave National Park: Touring the world's densest cave and seeing 95 percent of the earth's boxwork
Wind Cave National Park: Touring the world's densest cave and seeing 95 percent of the earth's boxwork

According to Lakota tradition, Wind Cave is where their people's souls emerged from the earth before their creation event. They held the site as sacred, aware of its existence long before brothers Tom and Jesse Bingham stumbled upon the natural entrance, an inexplicably windy hole in the ground, in 1881. By 1903, it had become America's first cave designated as a national park.

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Travel, NatureHannah Schultzsouth dakota, lakota, wind cave, national park, boxwork, 95, percent, cave, badlands, black hills, custer state park, garden of eden, popcorn, formation, bison, prairie dogs, flowstone, calcite, limestone, explorerComment
Mount Rushmore & Winter Hiking in Custer State Park
Mount Rushmore & Winter Hiking in Custer State Park

"On this towering wall of Rushmore, in the heart of the Black Hills, is to be inscribed a memorial which will represent some of the outstanding features of four of our Presidents, laid on by the hand of a great artist in sculpture," said President Calvin Coolidge in his Mount Rushmore Dedication Speech in 1927. At the age of 57, sculptor Gutzon Borglum began the project of carving into the Black Hills. The monumental project would be finished after his death in 1941, the finishing touches overseen by his son, Lincoln. In the end, the delicate sculpture became an icon of American history, four presidents—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt—forever wrought in stone.

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Hiking, TravelHannah Schultzsouth dakota, mount rushmore, national park, national memorial, national monument, custer state park, black hills national forest, calvin coolidge, george washington, abraham lincoln, thomas jefferson, theodore roosevelt, gutzon borglum, sculpture, black elk peak, harney peak, little devil's tower, hiking, hike, snow, ice, rock climbing, nature loop drive, scenic drive, turkeys, pronghorn antelope, bisonComment
Getting Stuck in a Bison Herd: A safari-like trip to Minneopa State Park
Getting Stuck in a Bison Herd: A safari-like trip to Minneopa State Park

My favorite thing about this park is that it is home to a bison herd. Back when the American plain bison were nearly hunted to extinction, conservation groups like those at Minneopa stepped in to create herds in order to save the species and protect the ecosystem. Minneopa's herd both lends to the conservation of a magnificent creature and helps maintain the prairie landscape. 

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HikingHannah Schultzminneopa state park, bison, American plains bison, wildflowers, Mall of America, Lego Store, Minnesota's Largest Candy StoreComment