Traveling the USA Part II

Big day today--my first ever horseback ride. We are doing a Mt Rushmore KOA campground "breakfast" horseback ride today. We sign in at the corral and our group of about dozen people get our instructions, and our horse assignments. My horse is Fudge; Joe gets Keg; Jere gets Walter.

We ride back for about an hour into the national forest that borders the campground. Nice scenery. I'm a little nervous when Fudge goes up and down hills, but I stay on the horse. Both my horse and Jere's horse want to keep eating the grass and we're not supposed to let them eat grass. The guide asks me "who's in charge?" and I respond, "definately the horse--he's bigger" By the end of the ride I do learn how to keep Fudge from stopping to eat the grass :-)

We get to the breakfast stop, climb off our horses and have french toast and sausage.

We take a different route back to the corrals and get back around 10:30. Great time. I thought we should go horseback riding in Wyoming, but this South Dakota ride was good.

We quickly pack up the 5ver and head to Wind Cave National Park. It's only about 35 miles down the road.

We set up the 5ver in the park's campground. No water or electric (or TV reception or cell phone reception) but nice scenery. We get our tickets for a cave tour and grab a quick lunch back at the campground.

So it's another National Park...we go to the visitor's center, see the movie, look at the exhibits. (Same routine at all the parks). Then head down for our ranger-led tour of the cave. Wind Cave is the 4th longest cave in the world; it's claim to fame is the boxwork on the walls.

After our 90-minute cave tour we head back to the campground and relax (I'm tired--didn't sleep well last night--not sure if I was nervous or simply excited about the horseback riding). Free firewood here, so Jere builds a campfire at 4pm and keeps it going all evening; we make dinner on it and later on make s'mores.

Jere attends the evening ranger program but Joe and I hang around the 5ver and read.

We sleep late and then drive a few miles down the road to the Mickelson bike trail. The Mickelson Bike Trail runs 109 miles through South Dakota. We're only biking a few miles of it, starting around the Crazy Horse Monument.

We bike a mile north to get a better view of the Crazy Horse Monument and then back to the trailhead and another 5 miles to Custer, South Dakota. We look around their visitor's center, get a bike tire fixed (it will be completely flat again tomorrow morning, so we really don't get it "fixed") and have lunch in downtown Custer. They have painted buffalo statues at several corners.

Then we head back to bike 5 miles UPHILL. It was a lot more fun biking downhill :-)

We drive back to the campground and head to the pool for a quick dip. There are two pools at the KOA so we head to the less crowded pool; we find out it's less crowded because every few minutes we get a whiff from the horse corral next door -- and it's not a good smell.

We quickly do some laundry before heading over to the Crazy Horse Monument. Twice a year they have a Nigh Blast and tonight is one of them. They set off 82 blasts in 82 seconds for the sculptor's wife/widow's 82nd birthday.

When we arrive, it is crazy full of people. I have no idea how many people have come for the Night Blast, but it must easily be in the thousands. We look at the monument and then see the movie.

The Crazy Horse Monument is a memorial for all the great American Indian leaders and will be the world's largest statue when it is completed. The mountain sculpture was started approximately 60 years ago. It is completely privately funded (no goverment funds) and is being worked on by the original sculptor's widow and 7 children. The finished sculpture will be a 3-dimensional statue of Crazy Horse riding his horse. Only Crazy Horse' face is finished so far. They have no idea when the remainder will be finished.

As we're looking at the sculptor's studio, the sky turns green and a large thunderstorm moves in. We wonder if the laser show and night blast will be cancelled, but around 9:45 they start the laser show and around 10:15 the blasts begin. It is an incredible sight--82 blasts at various places in the mountain in 82 seconds!

Full day of sightseeing today, starting with another trip to the Mt Rushmore National Memorial. Not sure why, but it's not a "National Park" or "National Monument"; it's a "National Memorial".

There are workers on top of Teddy Roosevelt's head today. They are setting up for the July 3 fireworks (I don't know why July 3; it seems like they should be July 4, Independence Day).

We tour the sculptors studio and walk the Presidential Trail at the base of the mountain.

Here is a photo of the amphitheatre that they use for the evening program:

After completing our Jr Ranger program activities (and getting our badge), we leave Mt Rushmore and head over to Keystone for an outdoor lunch.

We then take off for a very scenic drive on the Iron Mountain Drive with it's spiral bridges and narrow tunnels.

We make a few stops on the Iron Mountain Parkway and then continue to the Needles Highway, with its' narrow roads and tunnels. Including the famous Needles Tunnel:

There are several mountain climbers practicing their skills at the Needles stop. A man was killed here several days ago when he fell 70 feet at this spot, but the climbers today appear oblivious to the danger and appear to be enjoying their climbing.

The pinecones are just beginning to form on the pine trees here. They're really pretty:

We also make a stop at Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park and hike around the very pretty lake:

We return to the KOA for dinner, followed by two games of miniature golf, thunderstorms, and very slow wifi/computer time in the evening. Nice campground, but they need to work on their wifi.

We leave Devils Tower KOA and take off toward Deadwood, South Dakota.

Our drive to Deadwood includes a drive on the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, where we stop by a waterfall for lunch in the 5ver. The drive is nice, but after all the beautiful scenery that we've seen the last few weeks this scenic byway is nothing special.

We stop in Deadwood and look at their visitor center and walk around town. The entire town is a historical landmark and some of the restored old buildings have really interesting architecture.

But the restoration of the town has been financed by gambling, so almost every building appears to be a casino of some sort. I guess it is appropriate for a town of Deadwood's reputation to be financed by casinos, but there's not much to do there except gambling, so we don't spend much time there.

We continue our scenic drive to the Hill City/Mt Rushmore KOA. It is a huge campground! Check-in is fairly quick and we get a nice campsite in the back of the campground near the national forest, near the tenting and cabin area. We set up, relax a little, have dinner, and then head down the road to view the Mt Rushmore evening program. We first look at the museum and the visitor center's movie.

Each evening in the summer Mt Rushmore National Memorial has a special program with a slide show and special night lighting of the mountain. The program is very patriotic. It's nice, but borders on being a glorified tourist trap.

We pack up and leave the 7th Ranch RV Park and drive several hours through the prairies of Montana. We pass lots and lots and lots of pronghorn antelope in the fields beside the road. We drive through Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations on our way to Devils Towner, Wyoming.

One section of our drive has fields of blue wildflowers beside the road. Very pretty.

We set up at the Devils Tower KOA and head over to Devils Tower National Monument. As we drive into the monument we first past "prairie dog town". Lots of prairie dogs on both sides of the street.

We visit the visitors center/museum and then hike around the bottom of Devils Tower.

We have a nice relaxing walk til we come upon two guys who tell us that there's a rattlesnake just off the trail. There are lots of signs to warn hikers to beware of rattlesnakes, but I honestly didn't think we'd see any considering all of the people on the trail. We watch the 5 foot long snake until it starts heading in our directions, and then I walk away. Joe looks at the snake through the binoculars and doesn't see any rattles on the end, so we're not sure what kind of snake it is, but I'm a little freaked out that it seems to be unafraid of people and heading in our direction.

We finish our walk around the base of the mountain and head back to the campground for a swim in the pool. We come back from the pool and watch two busloads of high school students from Michigan set up many, many tents behind us. I guess they're on some sort of field trip. It's interesting, they even have their own kitchen set up, complete with tables & benches.

We were hoping to watch the movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (which has several scenes at Devils Monument) in the evening. Unfortunately we have some thunderstorms come through the area and the movie, which is shown outside at the campground every night, is cancelled tonight :-(