Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary |
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Six Hour Adventure Tour Call today for your reservation. $750 for 1-3 people for the adventure of a lifetime!! Tours depart at 10 am. It is important to make your tour reservation ahead of time! I am finally taking the time to provide you feedback on our trip to the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary June 16-19, 2008. If I had to sum up the whole multitude of thoughts and feelings my family and I have about our trip to South Dakota and the Sanctuary in one word, it would have to be “WONDERFUL”. For those people who might think the adventure tour is not going to be worth the donation price, I say your feelings are just plain wrong. Remember that the money all goes to help the horses. The tour Susan Watt provided for my wife (Cathy), my daughter (Carley) and little ‘ol me (Tom) was just priceless. While the sanctuary is fenced in through necessity, it is untamed wilderness with majestic wild horses running, frolicking and living free just as they were meant to! To witness these beautiful horses recognizing Susan and approach her to greet her (or show their newest baby) was truly heart-warming. So many babies! We even saw one baby who probably had just been born the previous night! A couple of mares had yet to deliver their babies. Some of the “goat paths” that Susan laughingly called roads were a little scary for my wife but for me, it only added to the wilderness feel of the whole tour! Besides the horses, we also saw authentic petroglyphs from early humans, a coyote, turkey vultures, prairie dogs, cranes, pelicans and so much more. All of these creatures living freely. The animals are managed as little as possible. The breeding of the horses is kept under control by separating the stallions from the mares and geldings. The boys are only allowed to be with the girls for a short time once per year. Susan explained that in this way they can be assured that the babies will all be born in the springtime and not during the harsh winter. At one point we stopped for lunch. Susan had made up a nice basket lunch with sandwiches, fruit, cookies (home-made!) and bottled water. We ate beside a canyon and looked out all around us to see unspoiled wilderness. We occasionally saw a horse or two. Susan said it was all Sanctuary, as far as we could see! When we went out again, we found a stallion that had somehow been missed during the previous round up of the boys. Susan was quite surprised to see him and made sure to take several pictures to identify him and get him away from the mares in the near future. We also saw a group of Lakota Sioux Native Americans preparing for their annual tree ceremony. The sanctuary contains a hill sacred to the Sioux and they are welcome to hold rituals/ceremonies there each year. It was really cool to see all the tee-pees and sweat lodges with the people doing what they’ve done for a couple hundred years in that same area! I’m told the area is sacred because the Cheyenne River flows in all four directions on the sanctuary. And when it comes time for her to buy a horse, she wants to buy it from the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary and no one else! She likes the idea of buying direct from the “manufacturer”. Our vacation was 9 days including travel time from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We spent 3 days at the BHWHS and I wish we could have spent more time there. Absolutely every single person we spoke to at the sanctuary or dealt with was just wonderful. Most called me by name and I didn’t recall having met them but they knew me! I would highly recommend going to see this place. Even if you don’t take the all day adventure tour, the bus tours will be great. They have so many horses and they need our help. Everyone’s help. The wild American Mustang played a vital role and important part in this nation’s history. This place, these people are dedicated to ensure that the Mustang will not entirely disappear from the Earth. They may not be completely wild here, but they aren’t going to be rounded up using helicopters and then slaughtered for dog food either! The truly wild Mustangs will all probably be gone soon. This is a wonderful place and an acceptable alternative to complete domestication and/or extinction. Thank You Susan Watt, Thank You Dayton Hyde, and thank you to all the volunteers for the wonderful mission you’ve dedicated yourselves to…for us, our children and FOR THE MUSTANGS!!! MAY THEY RUN WILD AND FREE……ALWAYS! Sincerely, Thomas F. Wagner and Family, Members of The Mustang Club of America & The Wisconsin Early Mustangers |
