Day 5 - Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park and Crazy Horse Memorial

Wildlife tally for the day: bison, wild burros, prairie dogs

When we planned the trip out this day was supposed to be pretty easy: travel from Wall, SD to Gillette, WY and hit Mt. Rushmore on the way. Susan decided the night before that she wanted to hit Crazy Horse Memorial, another mountain carving in the Black Hills of SD not too far from Mt. Rushmore. Neither of these turned out to be the highlight of the day. The highlight was the drive from Mt. Rushmore to Custer State Park and then the drive from there to Crazy Horse. This road was unlike any other! Amazing! Known as the Peter Norbeck National Scenic Byway, we would recommend you come to SD just to drive this road. Tack in Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse as an afterthought. 

Don't misunderstand. Mt. Rushmore is cool. There is a rather large and very nice facility at the base of the mountain. There is an Avenue of the Flags that leads up to the viewpoint, appropriately done in granite, of course. We hiked the loop trail that runs up near the base of the carvings and also has stops at the sculptor's studio. My engineer mind appreciated the exhibits showing how the carving was accomplished. In all I think we spent 2-3 hours there. Fortunately, one of the rangers mentioned Custer State Park and the scenic drive so we re-planned the day to fit that in.

A view right up George's schnoz!

First I have to tell you about lunch at the Powder House Inn. We stayed in Wall, SD the night before. We went to grab dinner and the kids and I quickly settled on a buffalo burger. As in Buffalo meat. Well it could have been ground cat for all we knew. It was so overdone it was crunchy. Just nasty. For lunch we went to the Powder House Inn in Keystone on the recommendation of a friend. Nicole surprised me and decided on the Buffalo short ribs instead of her usual chicken fingers. David went with an elk burger. And I decided to try a Buffalo burger again. They nailed it on all 3 dishes. Nicole says it best. Ironic when we are eating the wildlife we came to see.

Buffalo short ribs - yum!

Back to the drive. Custer State Park is a large park known for its wildlife viewing. Rt 16A, Iron Mountain Road is part of the scenic byway I mentioned and that is the ideal way to get to the park. The scenery is stunning as the road climbs up from Keystone over Iron Mountain and then down into the park. The picture at the top of the post is of David and Nicole at a viewpoint near the top of the mountain. If you ever do this road stop at the viewpoint. 

Equally amazing is the road itself. Lots of switchbacks. I've been on those before. New to me are "pigtails" in which the road forms a corkscrew to gain elevation. A bridge crosses over the road below in a circular fashion so the road can spiral up. Tough to describe but very cool to see. There are one lane bridges and one lane tunnels blasted through rock. One of them was purposely setup to give a great view of Mt. Rushmore as you drive through the tunnel. The tunnels are blind entrances and exits because the road curves sharply on either end. You stop, honk your horn, listen and then go if you don't hear anyone coming in the other direction. Check out the tour bus. That poor driver had to do some fancy driving to get the bus lined up with the entrance of the tunnel. The cars parked at the other end did not make his job any easier. 

Custer State Park definitely had the wildlife. We took the Wildlife Loop Drive and it lived up to its name. On a spur road we drove through the middle of a herd of bison who were camped on either side of the road, huffing and puffing in the heat. Apparently where the herd goes the flies go too. They were all over, just like the bison. Later in the drive we saw wild burros who were snacking on everything they could score from the people who had pulled over to see them. We saw more prairie dogs too. 

"Whaddaya think Fred, Should we charge 'em?"

"Give me Doritos and I promise not to bite"

The drive on Rt. 87, Needles Highway, part of the Peter Norbeck National Scenic Byway, also had switchbacks and one way tunnels. But the focus was on the scenery this time. 

Needles Highway - get it?

This guy had to fold his mirrors in to avoid hitting the walls.

We got to Crazy Horse around 7pm. This is a memorial to Native Americans and all they have suffered. It is a huge carving. They said that Mt. Rushmore will fit into just the head of Crazy Horse. It is a work in progress - since 1948. 65 years later and the only part done is the face. The torso and the horse are still being roughed out. The guy who started it died in the early 90's and his children have been managing and working on the project since then. The Native American art museum there is excellent but we only stayed an hour or so. We still had to get dinner and a 2 hour drive ahead of us.

After 65 years a long way to go

The drive across Wyoming in the dark was interesting for 2 reasons. We were on a 2 lane state highway (Rt. 16) for a lot of it. Wyoming is vast and very sparsely populated. In that 48 mile stretch we passed only 11 oncoming cars. Even I-90 was empty. The second weird thing was that in 1100 miles traveled so far, I had only seen 5 road kills. I see at least that many on my way to work every day in the summer. Maybe the Midwest animals are smarter than ours. Anyway, of the 5, I contributed 2. A small bird in eastern SD and a larger bird that came out of the brush on the side of the road in Wyoming. Not sure what it was. It seemed to fly slowly but I was so close there was no avoiding it. What to hear something sick? Susan and I started talking about me killing almost half the road kill in the Midwest and we started laughing uncontrollably. Chalk it up to 12 hours on the road. Hopefully that ends my tally for the trip.