25 August, Tuesday

We wake lying on very flat ground (it is prairie after all) in Blue Mounds
State Park. It’s a warm summer morning. No blustery winds! I start
singing “Oh what a beautiful morning…”  O admits he has the
same song going through his head. We take our time preparing
breakfast: potato cake flavored with onion, cheese, pepper and
butter. We have some of our fresh grapes, an apple and cherry tomatoes
with it. After 9 we head over to the park office to sign up for
another night. We want to explore the park and stretch our legs
before moving on.

The park is called Blue Mounds because the quartzite rocks here looked blue to
settlers travelling across the plains. This is industrial farming
country now, but the soil of the park land is too shallow to grow
anything. Lucky for us – it’s a lovely little park. They have been
working on restoring the tall grass prairie here and they have a herd
of 45 – 70 genetically pure bison here as well.

We hike 5 miles along the quartzite ridge, which looks more red than blue to
me.  We stop to talk to a park worker along the trail. He points out
that the plum trees have unusually large plums this year. He says he
has never seen so many or such large ones and recommends we try some. We spot the trees as we proceed down the trail. They seem to be the
plum equivalent of crab apples. The first one we try is very sour.
The second one is delicious. We near the parking lot and stop to
watch the dusty bison wallowing to ward off flies.  We read that
vigorous wallowing is also a competitive sport and a part of the mating
ritual.

Back in camp, we cook supper and repack. I think we are at least on packing version
3.0 now. We study our maps…goal for tomorrow: Badlands National
Park, SD. The distances out here are mind-boggling, it’s still a very
long way to Glacier!