Yellowstone 8/17/18 (End of Tour)

Today is the last day of the organized tour portion of our trip.  But before heading to the airport, we went to visit Bear Country.  Bear Country is similar to a zoo, but you view most of the animals from your vehicle - in our case, the tour bus.  The animals are segregated in areas where they are free to roam and interact, while natural predators are kept in different areas.  The largest area is reserved for the black bears, by far the greatest in number; I'm unsure of the actual number, but there were probably 50-100 bears roaming, while quite a few were sleeping in the large enclosure.

After the drive through the open section of the park, we had about an hour to wander the rest of the grounds.  More like a traditional zoo, there were baby bears, racoons, and several types of wolves.  Half way through the circuit, there was a snack bar where we rested and had a small snack before completing the loop.

Back on the bus, we headed for the Rapid City Airport.  After bidding farewell to the group (most are flying home), we climbed in our rental car to begin the journey to Davenport.  The trip will take two days with the a couple of planned short detours.

Our rental car experience was less than satisfactory.  It took several calls to both the national and local offices to get the satellite radio turned on and nothing was able to fix a major issue - the cruise control would not stay on.  It appeared that one of the auto sensors in the anti-collison system was misaligned and passing any car or road sign would cause the cruise control to turn off and it could not be used again until the system auto reset.  This would only happen (the reset) about five minutes after passing the thing that set it off.  The same process would then repeat itself - seemingly spontaneous!  With almost 800 miles to cover in two days, it was not the best.

The issue with the rental car only allowed us to visit one of our planned stops for the day.  We took the scenic route through Badlands National Park, but bypassed the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.  The later was opened in 1999 and preserves the last remaining Minuteman II ICBM system in the US.

The Badlands reminded me of Canyonlands in Utah.  The various layers of rock are visible from the many pull over vistas.  The loop added about an hour to our planned drive for the day, but was worth the additional time.  Stopping at the visitors’ center for a break and a park patch (more on this later), we pressed on to Sioux Falls, SD, where we stopped for the night.  We crossed back into the Central Time Zone during the drive....only one more until we’ll be back in our own time zone!

Pictures 8/17/18




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