Black Hills

After passing Chamberlain River just before the Badlands I could finally, after hours and hours of flat, boring, grassland landscape, tell that we were moving higher and to more unique parts of the country.  As we arrived in the Black Hills we turned left towards Mount Rushmore, our first stop, and immediately started up a long, steep mountain road that left no doubt that these were definitely not just hills as the name suggests.  One of the first things that stood out to Clarise as she tried to get some pictures of the mountains was that every single shot was ruined by billboard after billboard.  Never in my life had I seen commercialization ruin such a beautiful place.  Keystone, South Dakota, a small town of about 300, was more billboard than town. (Though we did stop for Subway while we were there.) 

Mount Rushmore was honestly underwhelming.  Maybe I had just seen too many pictures of it before but when I was there it was really just a feeling of, "Is this it?"  We left after less than 30 minutes after saying hi to a friendly couple heading towards Tucson we had seen earlier that day in Badlands NP and wound our way down Iron Mountain Road.

Iron Mountain Road was the best part of our trip through the Black Hills.  It was very beautiful as we winded through the forest, through stone tunnels (Clarise's favorite), up and around pig tale bridges, and soared by open cliffs.



At the end of the road we turned down Wildlife Loop Road and saw an amazing assortment of wildlife native to the High Plains.  Buffalo grazed right next to the road, Pronghorns seemed to be everywhere you looked, and some Burros entertained us by coming right up to the car until we had to leave them because one started chewing on our bike tires.

From there we headed south to Wind Cave National Park to see what I thought was a scenic overlook.  It turned out to be a one mile hike to the top of a mountain where an old fire tower was stationed. We hadn't planned to hike at this point but we were unable to do any of the numerous hikes that we'd planned due to significant snow on the ground and the high temperatures being in the 30's the whole trip.  But one mile seemed doable so we went for it.  It took over an hour to complete and was not for the faint of heart. It was almost entirely uphill on a narrow, snow covered ledge with no footprints to follow.  Perhaps the lack of footprints should have been a clue but I was tired of driving and wanted to hike somewhere.  We made it up alive and found the downhill was actually a mostly snow free gravel road down the backside of the mountain.  It was certainly an experience but we were definitely done with hiking in the snow for a while.