We brought some hot weather with us to Rapid City and The Black Hills. The first few days here are predicted to be 90-100 degrees. This is way off the chart for normal June weather in South Dakota. However, it is also predicted to be clear and sunny and that is very good for taking pictures. This is good. There are lots of outdoor things we want to do here and we will have 5 days to do them.
The first day took us to the number one sight-seeing location in the region, Mount Rushmore. Ellyn and I have been here before a long time ago with our sons. It looks like they have added a lot to the visitor’s center area since our last visit. Of course the monument itself has not changed but it is still as impressive as we remember it.
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Our traveling companions had not been here before so it was great seeing it through their eyes for the first time again. The story of the carving is still an amazing one.
From here we moved on to another, possibly more ambitious mountain carving project, Crazy Horse. This was started in the 1940s by a single man and is now worked on by his children and others, a total of about 15 people. It is probably an order of magnitude larger than Mount Rushmore and work has been going on for more than seven decades on it. But it is a lofty goal and it has a lot of backing. The visitor’s center was quite impressive and there is a lot more than just the monument planned for the site.
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Our second day of touring in The Black Hills took us to Custer State Park. This park has a remarkably varied landscape. The most spectacular part was the Needles Highway. This is not a road for big rigs but toads only. The “needles” are the many rock spires which stand up all over and you drive through some very narrow tunnels and some very sharp switch-backs.
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We also saw a lot of wildlife in the park. There is a whole “Wildlife Loop” where the Buffalo roam and the Deer and the Antelope play, as well as chipmunks, burros, prairie dogs, and marmots.
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We still have the old mining areas around Lead and Deadwood to explorer, but I will leave those for the next post.
