Notes
Beautiful run. Went through the wind cave valley trail and on to some buffalo trail. The buff trail was a marked single track trail where I often had to jump over buff patties. Eventually turned around after running about a mile through a prairie dog town where the single track had been muddled by their holes. They seemed harmless but chirped insistently and I wasn't really curious to know what their bite felt like. Ended up taking the original trail to its terminus and the park edge and turned around. I did some strides in an empty archery range (6×20+ sec) and at this point was pretty tired from all the elevation change and the rapidly increasing temp...
THEN, as I'm trudging back to the car, with less than a half mile to go, I turn a corner and I'm face to face with a massive bull bison. Just staring at me. Huge brown eyes suken into his massive bust. He could not have been more than 10 meters away and served as a wall in front of the only way back to my car. I didn't even see him at first so I'm moving at 7ish min a mile right towards him... then you'll probably notice my pace drops and my hr spikes. I backed away slowly. Then he started to walk towards me slowly. I was looking for any tree to climb at this point. Eventually I increased my distance turned my back to him and slowly increased my speed to a jog. I went all the way back to the archery range and he followed me all the way there and slowly movies on past me as I stood watching from afar, standing on a picnic table. Maybe he didn't care, but if he did, idk...
Next mission: find a running partner.