Bighorn at the Badlands

We left Custer and the Black Hills* this morning, after three wonderful days, and drove about 100 miles east, still in South Dakota, to the Badlands National Park, with its endless series of fantastically eroded natural features (see tomorrow's blip :)

Just a few miles into the park, we came upon a couple of parked cars, whose passengers were watching a group of four Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)-probably three females and a youngster at the edge of a precipitous drop-off. By the time I got closer, three of them were descending down a very steep gulley; this female was watching them-seemingly uncertain whether to follow. Soon she made up her mind and followed , but in the meantime I managed this shot. For more on the Bighorns, see here. They are named for the huge horns of the males, but the females' horns are far smaller.

We then followed the rest of the so-called Badlands Loop, to the Cedar Pass Lodge, where we are spending the night. As we checked in, I heard a fellow speaking with a Swiss German intonation; it turned out that he and his companion were from near Chur, in Graubuenden, where I had spent three years at a tiny college in the 1960s. We had a beer together after dinner-it was great (yet again, a small world).

*Edit: In the first line above I initially referred to leaving "the Black Forest" (which is in southern Germany), not the Black Hills--I spent a total of seven years in the 1960's-70's in Germany and Switzerland, which may explain the error (I hope no one was seriously misled :)