The Black Hills -- Part 3
Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore



Day 9 (cont'd.):  We emerged from Wind Cave around noon for a tour through the open prairie grassland above, heading back to the entrance of Custer State Park.

Click for full view or slide show

Custer State Park is a 71,000 acre preserve shaped a little like the continent of Africa (see map). The park skirts the town of Custer to the west, Wind Cave National Monument to the south and Mount Rushmore to the north, and is home to many animals. Needles Highway, which we traveled yesterday, runs through the park. Today, we will cover Wildlife Loop Road.

Graceful Pronghorn. On the trailer trip with my sister, our grandkids counted hundreds of pronghorn in Wyoming and South Dakota. This trip, Greg and I saw only a few.

Of course, there are always prairie dogs--huge colonies of them, often around the bison. It's hard to get more than a few in one picture without them looking like specks. The guy in the front is tail up.

Some beautiful red breaks among the granite hills

We were thrilled (well I was thrilled) to come across some of the "Begging Donkeys," one park animal tourists are allowed to feed. The herd numbers about 50, and they often block the road with their begging. Obviously, people love it.

 Custer State Park is home to a herd of bison that averages around 1300 head. They hold a roundup each year in September with real cowboys and everything. We visited in April, when the animals were still shedding their winter coats. Tourist traffic wasn't too bad -- only about a dozen cars here, including us.

Springtime means baby bison!

Hey! Is this big gal mooning us?

Farther up the road, I caught this shot of a timid white-tailed deer. I would have guessed the shrub in the foreground was wild lilac, but I read that it doesn't grow in South Dakota. Anyone out there know?

By this time it was mid-afternoon, and we still had a long way to go up Highway 16A to Mount Rushmore, and then on to Rapid City for the night. We got many wonderful views of the monument along the way. Below is a pictures I took at a distance to show the size of the heads compared to the mountain.

Mount Rushmore in the distance. Note the rubble from the original blasting below the scuptures.

We stopped for a late picnic lunch and short hike at a roadside stop. Here, other travelers duck under some gigantic blocks of the dense granite that makes up the Black Hills. Geologists estimate that the faces on Mount Rushmore will erode only 1 inch per 10,000 years!

When we finally arrived, Greg got a big kick out of this Coke machine sporting a picture of the monument. He said, "Okay, we've seen it, we can go now."

The "Avenue of Flags" displays all 50 United States flags, and a plaque gives information about each state. This view is looking back so you don't see the monument itself.

Up close, it is quite impressive. We did most of the hike around the base. The four presidents carved into Mount Rushmore are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Sculpted (with much blasting -- note the top of the rubble pile below the monument) by  Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln, the 60-foot heads were started in 1927 and completed in 1939. The educational center has much to offer -- be sure to leave plenty of time.

Keystone is a quaint town close to Rushmore. It was raining when we arrived, but we were thankful it had been clear earlier for our ramblings. We zipped through town and headed down out of the mountains.

                               A great billboard along the way.

And a double rainbow as we neared Rapid City, our stop for the night.

Join use next Saturday two of Greg's favorites in South Dakota--the Air and Space Museum and Wall Drug Store.