Again, I must reiterate: wow. It’s hardly to be believed that this place is part of the same, flat, farming state that borders our own, the landscape here reminds me of Pennsylvania. The weather has been absolutely perfect. We keep remarking that we picked the perfect time to come (rock on for May 2 weddings!) because there are hardly any people on the roads. There are tourists, but not too many, so it’s quiet but not completely isolated. Very romantic.
Today we were up and at ‘em around 5:30 (Mountain time) and got on the road by 6:45 to our first stop, the Crazy Horse monument which supposedly opened at 7, but that was a lie, so we took some pictures from afar and left for Mount Rushmore. We were wholly impressed with Mount Rushmore, say what you will about the controversy surrounding its making. There’s a nifty little trail and audio tour that you can take to see some very cool views over the Black Hills. There are more chipmunks than you could ever possibly imagine, and there are also mountain goats! I was hell bent on seeing a mountain goat before we left, and as you’ll see from the pictures, right before we left two of them appeared out of nowhere right in front of the visitors center!! Amazing! It topped off a bit of an unpleasant patch in our trail journey where I got really sick, so I was happy to have it end on a high note ☺
Onto Rapid City for a bite to eat at the Firehouse Brewery where we shared a delish meal, followed by a walk where John almost bought a tuba from an eager salesman (haha!), then to enjoy some iced drinks at Dunn Bros and login to the internet to post yesterday’s entry. We giggled and acted like a teenage couple hovering over our iMac with our icees, it was quite fun, and helped me recover a bit from whatever the hell it was that struck me at Rushmore. We were then going to go to the Wind Caves, but the long drive and the hour and a half journey they promise (all underground with over 300 steps to walk) didn’t sound like it would be best for me today, so we ended up going back to Custer State Park to drive the Wildlife Loop Road. That turned out to be the highlight of the day as you will see in our photos that follow!! We saw wild turkeys, two kinds of deer, antelope, burros, prairie dogs (we think) and of course, BISON! We actually saw wild bison! We even got out of the car and stood to take pictures of a whole herd of bison with their little young ’uns, it was absolutely incredible! A lot of the animals we saw were very close to the car so we got good photos, but the burros, oh my gawd the burros were the cutest things! They literally walk right up to the cars! John was out taking some photos and there was this adorable dark brown burro that started making a bee-line for him, so we made for the car where he kept right on following us. While I love animals, and these did appear friendly, they are wild so we kept the windows up even though it broke our hearts to drive away from those sweet faces, it’s probably for the best. We’ve got pictures of other folks who stopped to pet the burros and who blocked their cars to try to beg food from the passersby ☺ What silly loves!
Monday's Mileage: 156.8
Roadkill Report: Zero!! Double happiness!
(This post is from Monday, last post was from Sunday but we didn't have internet access so they are both a day late.)
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