We redeeed ourselves this morning! We were up before dawn and threw on some clothes so we could be at the Big badlands Overlook before sunrise. We had a while before the sun showed up as there was a band of low cloud on the hotizon, so the first shots were atmospherically gloomy, but once the suns rays popped over the cloud we got some lovely glwing photos of the red light on the badlands.
We’d decided to skip breakfast at the lodge and instead head out on an empty stomach, with the plan being to get breakfast when we were at Keystone, the small VERY touristy town near Mt Rushmore in the Black Hills. We’d stayed in Keystone for a couple of nights in 2009 so we knew we could grab breakfast there.
After filling our empyt stomachs we drove the mile or so up the road to the iconic monument. Unfortunatly they are doing a major renovation of the display area below the monument, we could still see it but the great little museum that we remembered from the preious trip was closed. So we took a few photos, and had some fun with “adding an extra head” photos before wving goodbye to Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln and carrying on…
In 2009 we’d been in the area about a month later and had found some of the local roads closed due to early snowfalls, so this time we were keen to drive the Needles highway, a scenic drive that goes up and over the peaks in Custer State Park. It’s a pretty drive through the classic pine forested areas of the Black Hills but the granite rock formations in this area are particularly prominent and peaky – you can see why it’s called the needles! In a couple of places the road passed through narrow, single lane tunnels. One of them was the narrowrest road tunnel we’d ever seen!
Coming down from the Needles we drove on south to our final National Park of the trip – Wind Cave National Park. I’d planned for us to do the “Natural Entrance” cave tour, so I got a surprise when I looked at their website to learn that ALL tours were currently suspended because their elevators were out of operation!! However, I still needed to buy my pin so we drove on down and stopped at the park Visitor Centre. Not only did I get my pin but we also watched a surprisingly interesting Ranger talk about the dicovery of the park and the stories told about the park by the local native peoples, the Lakota (or Sioux nation). The Ranger showed us the blow hole near the entrance to the cave and how the wind blows out of the cave ( and also sucks inward at times) depending on the difference in barometric pressure in the atmosphere. She held a ribbon over the little hole so we could see the Wind Cave doing its thing.
It was only a short drive from Wind Cave to Hot Springs where we were staying the night. Hwever the park had a little mor eup its sleeve for us as we were leaving – we came across a lonely Bison and another field of chirruping prairie dogs.
Hot Springs ( named because it has a number of springs in the area) is home to a fantastic paleontological site, the “Mammoth Site Hot Springs”. Over 140,000 years ago, due to some geological shennanigans, there was a sinkhole pool in the area in which a large number of mammoths managed to get stuck and died. The buried bones were discovered in the 1970s and an onging excavation of the boes has been running to this day. We joined an organised tour of the dig and saw a huge array of mammoth bones and various other ancient animals. We could also watch work being done in the laborotary to preserve the finds. It was fascinating!
For dinner we stopped in and had a tasty meal at the nearby Wooly’s Grill & Cellar ( named, for their local Willy Mammoths!). Tomorrow we say goodbye to South Dakota and head into Nebraska.. we’re on the final stretch now.
