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| Hiking | 11.66 Miles |
1,285 AEG |
| | Hiking | 11.66 Miles | 5 Hrs 49 Mns | | 2.00 mph |
| 1,285 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | After touring the Wind Cave, we did a big loop through some of the park's trails.
We meant to start with the Lookout Trail, but missed a switchback right away and ended up on the Centennial Trail instead. We saw 2 other couples on the Centennial trail, and both of them had started from the Lookout TH and followed the false trail as well. At least it wasn't just us! We decided to just reverse our planned loop and take the Lookout trail from the other direction, and we ended up losing the trail in that direction, too! Impressive, I know.
It was a fun hike anyhow, with minimal elevation gain and lots of wildlife! The only other people we saw were all within 2 miles of the TH, so the animals were out in abundance! We saw 3 bison: one of them blocked our way for about 20 minutes while he ate grass next to a bridge we needed to cross; another one came ambling across the meadow towards our campsite after dinner, and slept about 100 feet from our tent; the third one was leaning against one of the trail markers on our hike back out. We also saw lots of prairie dogs, and a few elk-- we actually walked up on two elk smashing their antlers against each other! We didn't see any coyotes, but heard them howling from all sides of our tent at night. I woke up at one point when I heard something scratching at our tent, convinced it was a coyote wanting to eat us, but it turned out to be our permit flapping in the wind.  |
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