The Long and Winding Road

We had what I can only imagine was a perfect day in the Badlands. The sky was overcast and there was often a nice breeze. This kept the temperatures pretty reasonable as we did some short hikes and explored the park.  There is really no shade there so when the sun is out, it gets awfully hot.  There are so many scenic overlooks around the park loop road, and they all had amazing views.  It's hard to describe just how beautiful it is there, it's got an other worldly feel to it that is just amazing.

Badlands National Park

Badlands Vista

After we explored enough, we decided to go off the beaten track a bit and visit Robert's Prairie Dog Town.  It was down a 5 mile dirt road in the park.  It was a long 5 miles but once we were there, we saw hundreds of prairie dog.....burrows.  We didn't see that many critters but there was one who was not at all camera or people shy and strutted around allowing us to get lots of shots.  As a bonus, we also got to see our first buffalo and Greg got some good pictures of him as well!

Prairie Dog Super Model

We left the park and headed for Wall to get our Griswalds on at Wall Drug.  It was actually a pretty fun stop, kind of like the South of The Border of South Dakota.  From there, after a quick stop for groceries and liquor in Rapid City (that was a treat, you can buy all your beer, wine and liqour at the Safeway and get discounts with your Safeway card!), we headed to Keystone and Mt. Rushmore.

Bella Hamming it Up

Cowboy Kellen

Black Hills

Here is where the unintentional exploring started.  I had picked what I thought was a campground very close to Mt. Rushmore.  We planned to make dinner, meet up with Greg's Dad who is joining us for a few days, and then head over to the monument for the lighting ceremony.  we turned down the road that the campground was supposed to be on and followed Google maps.  We passed the location and no campground was in site.  I pulled up the website and in BIG letters on the directions page it said not to follow GPS directions and had a map on how to get to the campground.  It was 10 miles further down the road!  We decided to just keep going and that started the long and windy road right over the mountains in Black Hill National Forest.  This "scenic: route was all narrow twisting roads, rickety bridges and one lane tunnels the entire way. 

One Lane Tunnel

Luckily our little Sunstar could handle it all! We stopped at the overlook at the top of the mountain and got a bonus view of Mt. Rushmore from across the way.  45 minutes after we realized we weren't at the campground we arrived.  The owner told us it was only 15 minutes the other way, good to know since we were headed back after dinner.  Even with all my planning, I missed this one by a country mile.  Good news was we got a cool bonus tour of the Black Hills and we still made it to Mt. Rushmore in time to see the lighting ceremony. 

Black Hills Overlook

Overall a great fist day of sightseeing, fingers crossed that we have many more like that to come!