Day 15 (South Dakota)

Because we did not get in until after midnight we got a late start today. We were not sure what we were going to do because it was raining and cloudy. I really wanted to see Crazy Horse (because I saw it when I was a kid and I wanted to see how much it had changed). We decided to drive by Crazy Horse and see what we could see. It was dark and the clouds were low, so we drove to the town of Custer and had lunch. After we ate it looked like it was going to clear up just enough, so we drove back to Crazy Horse. When we got to the booth I asked “If we can only see half of the mountain do we only have to pay half?”, and to my surprise she said yes. So we got in to see Crazy Horse for $15.

By the time I took this picture it was already 4:00 PM.

 

It has come a long way since I saw it in the 80’s.

 

 

 

Here we all are in front of Crazy House. We are all ready for the rain.

 

 

 

 

We were listening to the radio to try and catch a weather forecast, and we heard that the fireworks at Mount Rushmore were tonight July 3rd. So we drove on over to Mount Rushmore. We were very surprised to see cars parked on the highway 3-4 miles from the top.  Apparently if you want to see the fireworks at Mount Rushmore it is a all day affair. We were able to drive up to the top and take some pictures, but we were not to excited abut climbing up the highway to stand in the rain for 4 hours hoping the fireworks would go off.

 

We asked the kids if they wanted to try and stay for the fireworks or go to Custer State Park and look for Bison. It was unanimous we want to see Bison!

We turned around at the top of Mount Rushmore and drove over to Custer State Park.

 

 

 

 

We saw pronghorn antelope, deer, prairie dogs and a heard of burrows.

 

 

 

There is 18 mile scenic loop around the park and at mile 15 we finally saw a heard of Bison.

Custer State Park has a heard of 1,500 Bison they were one of the first locations to start the preservation of Bison.

 

 

 

The Bison were an both sides of the road. There were hundreds of them. Really cool.

 

 

 

 

This guy was the biggest one out there, and he crossed the road right in front of us. He was pretty scary.

 

 

 

 

We ended up taking some crazy back road back to the campground. It had pigtail bridges, switch backs, and one way tunnels. At the top we saw this rock formation called “The Needles Eye”. I wonder why?

We didn’t get back to the camper until 9:30 and we didn’t get to bed until midnight. At this point of our trip we had no idea what day it was, what time it was, or what was going on in the world, but we were having fun.