South Dakota Hikes: Badlands Saddle Pass Loop

I feel incredibly lucky to live an hour from Badlands National Park, which gives us the opportunity to quickly take advantage of breaks in the weather to explore this beautiful area. Such was the case last week when our January temperatures rose into the upper 50 F / 10 C for a few days. Although …

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2025 Travel Recap

Our 2025 was filled with new adventures and lots of travel to spend time with loved ones, both domestic and abroad. We started the year with road trips around the Mountain West to visit friends and family in Colorado and Utah and hike in new-to-us national parks in Utah and Nevada, including Capitol Reef, Bryce …

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South Dakota Hikes: Buzzard’s Roost

Despite a late start on what ended up being a rainy morning, we managed to get out of the house and over to the Black Hills to check out a hiking area we've been eyeing since we moved to the area called Buzzard's Roost. The multiple trails in this area can be connected into various …

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South Dakota Hikes: Silver Creek-Flume Loop

The temperature finally dipped below 85 degrees for a day so we headed for the (Black) hills to do some hiking on the Silver Creek Trail and part of the Flume Trail. It was an interesting stretch of relatively flat trail with some creek crossings and lovely wildflowers in bloom. There were lots of people …

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Winter Weekend in Custer State Park

When we visited Custer State Park last summer, I spent some time with their visitor brochure and was drawn to the winter park activities. It seemed clear based on things like free snowshoe rentals and hiking trail treasure hunts that they were trying to entice people to the park in the off-season. Mission accomplished, as …

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Custer State Park: Winter Hikes

When we scouted places we might want to live in South Dakota and Wyoming, the Black Hills area was at the top of our list. One of our favorite days was driving Needles Highway and down through Custer State Park to our accommodations in Hot Springs, South Dakota. We promised ourselves we would be back, …

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The Mammoth Site

As part of our trip through eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota we spent a night in Hot Springs, SD. When I looked up things to do in the area, one of the top rated activities was called The Mammoth Site. When I mentioned it to our AirBnB hosts, they also said it was worth …

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