However, it was the ONE thing she kept asking over and over to do, so I knew she couldn't be denied her primary vacation request.
So, we went on a horseback ride at Circle B Ranch!
Our wrangler, Ted, took an instant liking to my eager little cowgirl and gave her quite a bit of attention throughout the ride.
Kaitlin's horse was named Coco.
Mine was Reba and, fortunately, she had very photogenic ears! Aren't they lovely?
They were both very good horses and kept us safe on some areas of the trail that had some pretty steep drop offs, which made mama more than just a little bit nervous.
You don't see any pictures of those areas because I was simply too busy holding on to try to take any chances taking pictures!!
Kaitlin had a great time and still says that it was her FAVORITE part of the trip. Yeehaw!!
After that, we went back to the hotel to get Justin and head out for the days drive. First, we went along Needles Highway and found another great view of Mount Rushmore.
Then, we stopped at Sylvan Lake to stretch our legs and Justin and Kaitlin enjoyed a bit of rock climbing and a few photo opps.
We continued on our way to the special rock for which the highway is named.
Not too much further down the road, we stopped at another overlook that had some friendly little chipmunks. We shared our granola bars with them.
Then we visited the Wind Cave. Our guide was a little quirky, but very knowledgeable.
Then, it was time to head back towards Rapid and we took the wildlife loop road in Custer State Park in hopes of seeing some buffalo. We were not disappointed.
Just look at this guy. He also had a friend.
Then, we saw some antelope...
...and a very pretty deer.
We came along this guy all by his lonesome and he was not shy about sticking his head right inside our car when he saw that we had apples to share.
He started to drool like crazy and so Justin started to pull away. He drooled down the entire length of my car! We were all laughing so hard.
Then, we just got out and fed him some more. When we left him and drove over the hill there were about 20 more mules and about 5 other vehicles stopped and feeding them.
We had started to think those lonely two buffalo were all we were going to see, but then we came over a hill just before the sun went down and saw this...
This picture doesn't do what we saw any justice. There were probably 100-150 buffalo spread over a wide area of rolling hills...I didn't have a wide enough lens to capture them all.
We stopped along with several other vehicles and just watched the buffalo roam the hills as the sun went down. It was quite exciting.
That was the end of day two in the Black Hills.
