After a lovely hot shower, we packed up and headed off. We hadn’t seen much of Custer State Park the day before so decided to do some exploring this morning. First stop was the grocery store at the entrance to the campsite for a coffee.
We bought ourselves 2 coffee cups at the start of the holiday and they have paid for themselves many times over. Whenever we go to a gas station or store for coffee, we take our cups and usually the price is only a $1 (sometimes even less) for a refill compared to $2 if you need a cup and lid. Occasionally we make coffee for ourselves in the morning when we can be bothered to get the gas burner out, and sometimes I treat myself to a spiked hot chocolate in them before bed.
We left the campsite and headed on highway 87 where we stopped off at one of the pull out and then again at Mt Coolidge Lookout Tower to take in the views. Although it wasn't a clear day, the views were amazing and in the distance we could see the Crazy Horse Monument, Mount Rushmore, Needles, Badlands National Park and the Black Hills. A taste of what was to come over the next few days.
We picked up the 16A and headed down one of the most scenic roads in the park, Iron Mountain Road. It was an awesome road to drive with lots of curves, many taking you back on yourself, cute little bridge and tunnels and lots of opportunities to get a well framed shot of Mount Rushmore in distance.
When we reached Mount Rushmore, we were excited to see how it was going to compare to Crazy Horse. If I am honest, I was a little disappointed. There is no doubt that the memorial is impressive, how anyone managed to blow up, shape and sculpture the rock into any level of detail must have been incredibly challenging. The museum in the memorial shows a few of the older designs and you can see how the challenges with he rocks led to the design being changes quite a few times. It also shows you how difficult it was back in those days to shape the rocks, this was before modern technology such as lasers and well before safety of workers was a priority.
What I found disappointing was that the memorial looked to me like it wasn't quite finished. We learnt from the museum that the money ran out at the start of World War 2 and then the artist commissioned to produce the sculpture died a year later. The faces of the presidents are mostly completed although I think Lincoln's face doesn't look as complete as the other presidents. In the original design, the presidents are also supposed to have bodies but when the money ran out, this was left off. It's a shame that the artist full dream was not achieved and the full effect not quite there.
I think my mood around the memorial was not helped by the number of tourists which felt like were squeezed into a relatively small viewing space and this was off season. There was also supposed to be an interpretive walk around the park in-front of the memorial which explained a little about each of the presidents. We started off on the walk thinking how nice it was to get away from the crowds and to get a slightly closer look at the faces but half way around we hit a closed sign, the path was under renovation.
We left Rushmore and headed back on the road, this time towards Badlands National Park.
The road to Badlands was a very straight road and we mostly went across farm land seeing very few other cars along the way. When we stopped off for supplies in one of the towns, we did see a car sticker on a beaten up old truck which said ‘South Dakota is for Farmers’. It sure is!
As we arrived into Badlands National Park, we pulled in at the welcome sign and were greeted by 3 male buffaloes who were determined to get in on everyone's picture of the park sign. We managed to get our pictures before one of them started to get a little too close (they should be 2 bus-lengths away) so we jumped into the car and headed off to safety.
Once in the Badlands, we drove along the Badlands Loop Road all the way to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center and our campsite next door. There were a number of pull outs along the road and normally we would pick and choose just some of them to stop at but they were all so good, we couldn't choose and ended up stopping at everyone.
Asides from the amazing vistas at the pull outs, there were so many interesting rock formations caused by volcanoes thousands of years ago. These were very different from the rock formations we had seen elsewhere. Lee and I now joke that we are now qualified geologists as we have learnt about so many different types of geological events, rock types and formations and events affecting the geology of the land.
As we continued driving along the loop road, we didn't see any more buffaloes but we did see Lee's favourite US animal, the prairie dog, as well as a herd of Bighorn sheep who seemed to be playing a game of chicken with the cars.
We learnt during the nature walk and at the visitors center that one of the reasons this park is protected is due to the high number of fossils that have been found. There is even a fossil lab at the visitors center where they investigate and preserve fossils that continue to be found in the park. It was interesting learning all about the different types of creatures that used to live here including huge underwater sea creatures, to miniature horses and even crocodiles.
Our campsite for the night was at the National Park campground and Lee had once again done a very good job at choosing us a nice site. Hopefully he will manage to do a blog soon with some hints and tips on how to ensure you get a good site as whatever he did when we were booking has worked. The site had a lot of space, we backed onto an open area of land rather than onto another campsite. This gave us an awesome view of the sunset.
We originally planned to have dinner in the park restaurant as fires were not allowed and we knew (thanks to our friends in Custer State Park) that it was going to be too windy to use the propane. We were disappointed to find out that the restaurant closed at 6:30pm, a little too early for us as we wanted to enjoy the sunset first so we ended up eating leftover pork sandwiches for dinner and cold Devils Testicles. It was yummy and the best bit was that there was no washing up!
The look out and views from Custer park were pretty amazing, some great scenic views
ReplyDeleteThe drive toward Rushmore was great, I loved the little tunnels and as you say, some great framing shots of Rushmore itself.
Banging tune to start the vid and then a perfect match for when you get to Rushmore. I have to say, I was pretty impressed and certainly liked it more than the crazy horse one!!
There were indeed lots of Wall Drug signs and the store did look quite funky, some great pics on the various sit-ons that were outside the store.
Music for Badlands was great and the views over the pinnacles were superb. The Bison looked ready to charge you ;-) Some of the scenery and rocks looked similar to the south west.
Cool to see a stamp go in the book, it has been mentioned in lots of entries but this is the first one we've actually seen!
Bit of a different campsite to usual, looks like you are just in a field although the curvy shelter over your bench is pretty cool and the pic of the two of you is great.
Hehe, some cool outtakes as the post credits scene - nice.