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Black Hills of South Dakota, Day 2
We visited the Black Hills again today. Our first stop was Wind Cave National Park where we went on a cave tour. Afterwards, we visited The Mammoth Site to the south before returning north via Custer State Park. The highlight of the day though was seeing an eagle flying away with a prairie dog that it just caught!
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Black Hills of South Dakota
We spent today in the Black Hills south of Rapid City, South Dakota. Our first destination was Mount Rushmore. We spent a few hours there before heading south to Custer State Park where we spent the rest of the day.
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The Badlands and Delta-09
We headed out early to start at Badlands National Park from the west. We were hoping to see some wildlife and were not disappointed, despite the extremely high winds. We worked our way thorough the park, doing all the short hikes and stopping at all the overlooks except the ones visited did two days ago. Afterwards, we drove west to check out the Delta-09 site, part of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.
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Devils Tower National Monument
We headed out in the morning to visit Devils Tower National Monument in northwest Wyoming. While it ended up being a cold and rainy day, with lots of fog, we were still able to do two hikes and get some great views of the tower.
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Badlands National Park
After arriving in South Dakota today around noon, we headed out to Badlands National Park. We spent some time enjoying one of the scenic overlooks and two short trails. Beautiful scenery in the “baddest” of the badlands!
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Ellanor C. Lawrence Park
We visited Ellanor C. Lawrence Park in Virginia today between lunch and dinner, mostly to walk around a bit to be able to eat more! This small park is between Centreville and Chantilly, a few miles south of Dulles, and owned by Fairfax County. It is a nice place for a walk with trails through a forested area nestled between a highway and smaller road. We planned on doing a loop but it turned into an out and back when we realized the western half of the trail was through partially swampy unmowed grass! We were rewarded for our efforts though as we spotted a species of bird that we’ve never seen before, the Eastern Towhee!
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Local Cherry Blossoms & Finches
It has been nearly a week since the local cherry blossoms have started to bloom. The first few trees still look wonderful with very few petals that have fallen to the ground. The weather has been quite a bit cooler since the first day and trees that started a bit later seem to have quite a mix of flowers and buds. Today, we were treated to a wonderful sight – a few male House Finches were busy eating the flowers!
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DC Cherry Blossoms, Again
We headed down again to Washington DC today and once again viewed the cherry blossoms. While the weather was a bit cool, it was quite pleasant though unfortunately the sky was overcast. Overall, quite a few of the cherry blossoms have fallen from the trees already, perhaps because of the cool and rainy weather yesterday. Some of the trees that were a bit late in blooming have progressed, but there are still quite a few unopened buds on many of the trees. We think maybe the cooler weather is slowing things down a bit.
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DC Peak Bloom
The National Park Service officially declared peak bloom for the cherry blossoms yesterday! So of course, we had to visit this morning. We planned on arriving before sunrise but ended up much later due to significant traffic on the way and then failing to find a nearby parking spot. However, the cherry blossoms were beautiful once we finally made it there!
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Local Cherry Blossoms, Day 3
It has been a bit cooler since the local cherry blossoms just started to bloom but that hasn’t stopped them at all! The tree that we photographed two days ago had a few visible flowers but now many of them have bloomed!
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Here and there but not quite everywhere!