Today we took one of the best, if not THE best drive Peggy or I have ever enjoyed. The strange part is that all of today’s run was in South Dakota. We started by driving from Heartland RV near Hermosa, SD, up SD-36, a road I mentioned a couple days ago. The terrain and scenery on this road are terrific and seem to change dramatically with the changes in the light. There are some nifty red rock canyons as you gain altitude and we got to check out the sights in the morning sun.
We turned north on SD-16A which is also called the Iron Mountain Road and right away started seeing big herds of bison that were calmly blocking the road. There were some bulls with the herd and they are very impressive critters, fully buffed out with rippling muscles and startlingly large testicles. They were also quite a few calves with this herd. We found they do not cotton much to cars and seem to have even less respect for motorcycles because one of our fellow motorists decided to pass through the herd without their consent. They must have gotten too close to one of the calves because Mom charged right up to the bike. I noted the visible parts of both the biker’s and his female passenger’s faces turned a very interesting shade of grey and pretty much remained that way even though the Mom stopped her charge before squishing the puny humans and their bike underfoot. I’m glad we were in Charlotte, one of the only vehicles in the queue more massive than the bison.
SD-16A is a road that challenges all drivers and particularly gives the willies to those driving big, long monsters like Charlotte. There are 300+ curves, two pigtail turns (where you pass over the road on a bridge, turn hard right and corkscrew under the bridge within about 300 feet), three tunnels less than 10′ wide and less than 10′ high and climb or descend a couple thousand feet within about 17 miles.
After clearing the bison herd, we continued to just outside the tourist Mecca of Keystone before turning west on SD-244. SD-244 wanders across the ridges of the Black Hills and the scenery is nothing less than spectacular. We did not think it could get much better until we reached SD-16, turned south and then east on SD-87, also called the Needles Highway. This road travels through the highest elevations in the Black Hills. After passing through the skinniest tunnel (and the most out-of-square tunnel) Peggy has ever rubbed the mirrors against rock in, we arrived at Sylvan Lake. This gorgeous body of water has grass meadows for about a third of it’s circumference and the remainder is surrounded by enormous stone monoliths in a compact arrangement that only allows one small exit for the water. There are a few granite islands in the center of the lake. This place is absolutely stunning.
From Sylvan Lake we continued on the Needles Highway passing through some more really skinny one-lane tunnels (no more mirror contact) and quite a few tight curves until we reached the Needles. Right at the top of this part of the road (about 6500′ elevation) there is a pull-out big enough for about 8 cars where hundreds of enormous rock sections have eroded in such a way that they are all pointy at the top. They stand up a hundred or more feet above the pull-out and you can get out and wander through the extremely narrow passages between individual sections. There is even a section where two pinnacles have leaned against one another resulting in an eye in the top of the needle. This place is a wonderland, the likes of which I have never witnessed previously. We were almost unable to drive because we kept stopping and taking pictures in all directions. There is no end to the magnificent scenery in this place.
We gradually descended down from the Needles through more gorgeous ridges and canyons until we got to SD-16A bypass through Custer State Park where we pulled out long enough to take some photos of some mountain goats that were browsing alongside the road. We got a few shots before some idiot decided to see if he could approach them in his Prius. The goats were unimpressed with his crybaby hybrid gerbil and they split. SD-16A bypass travels through some gorgeous canyons until it reaches SD-36 which we took back home although this time we got to see it in the afternoon light as a bunch of little fluffy clouds passed over the terrain. Another whole new aspect and it was the bee’s knees.

Today we used the quite good wi-fi at our park to attempt to make air travel arrangements for our kids for our annual trip to Cabo San Lucas in November. Unfortunately, our mileage credits are with Alaska Airlines and their website is set up in such a way that making reservations, particularly for award travel, induces fury in stupid users like me. I was mostly unsuccessful for a good part of the morning on the kids’ travel but was able to book Peggy’s and mine. We paid full fare. Booking the award travel seemed impossible so we called Alaska and, not surprisingly, the girl on the other end was also flummoxed by her employer’s site and failure set in. Another session in the afternoon finally got the tix but Alaska prevented efficient use of my award mileage credits so I gave up only about $300 poorer.
Today we went back to Custer State Park again because the drive up to the park on SD-36 is just gorgeous, the east side of the park itself is filled with critters along with beautiful scenery and, best of all, our state park pass we bought last Friday is good for a week so entry today was free.
The drive up 36 starts right around the corner from our campsite at Heartland RV and wanders about 10 miles through pretty farm and ranch lands speckled with fantastic rock formations. The great scenery continues once within the park. Within about 5 miles of the entrance we spotted wild turkeys, pronghorn antelope and some more buffalo which are really bison. One enormous bison bull was strolling along the road unbothered by motorists because he could be. He was very large and healthy looking. A no-nonsense type of guy. We also pulled down some neat side roads with ample additional animals to see. They all look pretty chubby which is good because horrible winter is coming and scarce food will be available once snow covers everything. This place is pretty far north and at about 4000 foot elevation.
We returned from the park down 36 again but it all looked different because the light had changed. I think I could be pretty happy just driving up and down this highway every couple of hours; there is something changed each time we pass.

Today was one of those really tough moving days. We saddled up at Hart Ranch RV Resort near Rapid City and took off down SD-79 some 8 miles to Heartland RV Park near Rapid City. The drive took about ten minutes and total time from leaving Hart to being set up in Heartland was almost 90 minutes. It was quite taxing.
Since we arrived at Heartland previous to their published checkout time, we had plenty of time to run errands. We took in Camping World, a fabric store for Peg to replenish her exhausted purple thread supply, a Lowe’s for bird seed and some hardware, America’s Mailbox to set up a South Dakota mailing address, picked up some fuel, dined in a good Chinese Restaurant (Great Wall) that left us with food for another meal at night and finished up with a trip to Scab-Mart to buy some groceries and marvel at our co-customers. It was impoverishing, mundane and tasty.
We were so glad to be done with these tasks that we went back home and had some porter and re-heated Chinese food before laying about for the remainder of the evening.

We started today’s journey by going into a little Rapid City neighbor called Box Elder for dirt cheap fuel -$2.119/gallon – and filled up Charlotte’s voluminous tank. From the fuel stop we took off for Mount Rushmore, retracing a good bit of the road we took to Keystone yesterday. Keystone had not improved since our visit 24 hours ago so we continued into the Mount Rushmore National Memorial some 2 miles away.
Peggy and I had stopped in at Rushmore in 1979. There have been several changes since then. One change is that our National Park access pass does not work here anymore because the place is run by a concessionaire. The funky cafeteria you see in the Alfred Hitchcock classic North by Northwest is no longer there having been replaced by enormous, scene-blocking masonry things which are liberally sprinkled with gift shops and snack bars and restaurants. They do have a very nice museum which they didn’t have back in the Pleistocene Era when we previously visited the park.
However, after paying $11 to park and taking a hike from the parking structure through the masonry things and gift shops, there is the same, gorgeous scene of the four presidents’ likenesses carved into the mountain. Gudson Borglum, the main guy responsible for the art was a master at light and shadow and the work certainly benefitted from his efforts. He kicked the bucket just before the work was completed, leaving the remainder to his son, Lincoln. Lincoln did a superb job.
We lounged around in the shady parts of the viewing plaza (it is nearly 100 degrees today) before taking a trail about a half a mile to get a close-up view of the work. Large sections of the trail are fortunately shaded by conifers and Peg and I scampered from shady spot to shady spot trying to avoid the broiling sun on this warm day. Eventually we came to a raised viewing platform right at the bottom of the pile of rock blasted from the mountain and the view was spectacular. The almost-white carved sections contrast beautifully with the adjacent rounded rock natural formations which are equally striking.
We shlepped through some of the gift shops looking for a certain type of post card Peg has started collecting from other national parks but Rushmore gift shops did not have the right type so Peg ended up with some T-shirts. From the Memorial we went back home for naps because tomorrow is moving day.

Another day of exploring around Rapid City. We started out with a good breakfast and some fortified coffee before driving south on Hwy 70 until we turned west into Custer SP on Hwy 40. We continued on Highway 40 through some extraordinary terrain with grasslands on the fairly level sections and everything else being very abrupt vertical sections of rock. It is quite striking and a wonderful drive through stunning beauty until you get to Keystone. Keystone is the result of way too many tourist traps competing for dollars in a tiny area. The sign going into town shows a population of 396 but there must be that many activities alone in this tourist Mecca. It has a full spectrum of caves you can pay to see, food joints, taverns and bars, a steam train to ride for a price, dinosaur exhibits you can pay to see, chainsaw carvers and, of course, Indian jewelry which may or may not have been made by Indians. It is pretty ugly.
We continued through Keystone and as soon as we left town, the scenery returned to spectacular. We got on a road called 16A that takes you through some very difficult terrain on the way to Custer SP. The road is very narrow, has a few one-lane tunnels, about 350 curves, some pigtail bends where the road curls over itself as it climbs and, incidentally, some striking views of Mount Rushmore a few miles away. The pullouts are rare but the scenery from them is spectacular as you pass through the Black Hills NF. I could easily spend quite a bit of time driving every road in the Black Hills, both directions. It is absolutely magnificent scenery.
We finally pulled into Custer SP and parted with $15 that gives access to any SD state park for a week. We had not gone more than about 3 miles when we came across a pretty big herd of bison grazing in a big meadow at about 4000′ elevation. They had their babies with them and although I cannot call them cute, they certainly look better than their folks. A big bull crossed the road in front of our vehicle, because he could, and we got a picture indicating he occupies about the same volume as a mini-van. We also spotted some more prairie dogs, out of their holes doing prairie dog stuff but they always have one or more watch prairie dogs keeping an eye on any approaching enemies. When the watchdogs make a certain chirp, all of them promptly disappear into holes leaving only the watchdog leering at the interloper. Not too far away, some antelope were hanging out and calmly grazing but not too near the cars. These animals have it right; keep away from men. We also spotted some white-tailed deer browsing off the side of the road.
We eventually passed out of the park and back into the Black Hills NF. We continued to the town of Custer where we turned on Hwy 385 toward Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was a great strategist because he was instrumental in killing off Gen. George Armstrong Custer, a renowned Native American elderly, woman and child killer who had been transferred here after doing tons of wacky stuff in the Civil War. He led headlong poorly thought-out charges in the Civil War where almost all of his men were eradicated but, miraculously, the jerk was not killed. Numerous horses took a bullet for him. He hounded the Sioux for years in his attempt to force the policy of Manifest Destiny on folks who were not too skookum on women-killing megalomaniacs being in charge. The Sioux, led by Crazy Horse, greased him and all his accompanying soldiers of the 7th Cavalry not far from Rapid City. I bet the rejoicing was widespread through the Native American population.
Crazy Horse is being commemorated with an enormous carving of his likeness astride a horse made from a pretty big mountain. You can spot him from miles away but we elected to go into the site and look at the work up close. There is a pretty good museum containing stuff about the mountain carving efforts and Native American, mostly Sioux, societies. We came to see Crazy Horse in 1979 and they have made quite a bit of progress since although they have primarily removed overburden to get down to the good stuff. His face is complete now but it was only a nose in 1979. His arm is mostly completed and they are blasting down to where they can start work on the finish of the horse. They have been working here for 65 years and think they might be done in another 35. The project is really massive – Rushmore’s four presidents will fit below Crazy Horse’s arm and above the neck of the horse.
Today was a magnificent drive and I would not be upset if I got to repeat it.

Today we took a spin through Wall where some strange folks have built Wall Drug and the Badlands. We drove over first to the tire store and picked up our brand new wheel and not quite as new spare tire and only had to part with $121 which is a lot less than we expected to pay. The tire guys at Dale’s Tire were terrific.
From Dale’s we headed east on I-90 until we reached Wall, SD, home of Wall Drug. Wall Drug puts up scores of signs in South Dakota advertising their stuff (which seems to be almost everything except drugs) which you can spot as you approach the area from any direction. Outside SD, they put up signs indicating how many miles it is to Wall Drug. I even saw one of their signs indicating it was 5 thousand and some miles to Wall Drug from the river cruise dock in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
We stopped for a bit and went in to give the place a sniff. Wall Drug seems to be about a block long and a block deep and they seem to sell almost anything a tourist could desire. We spotted belts, cowboy hats, baseball hats with Wall Drug embroidered on the brim, key chains, shot glasses, drink cups, lots of candy, burgers, taffy, bumper stickers and a myriad of other shit items. We bought a belt and departed but not before almost stepping in some puke left in front of an amusement machine that tests one’s grip in the main hallway. Maybe someone ate a bit too much Wall Drug delicacies.
The main street of Wall becomes Highway 240 which is a big loop through the Badlands. We headed south on 240 through what is initially rolling prairie grasslands until we reached the edge of the Badlands which just start at a long line through SD. From the overlook when you look north, there is rolling hills of grass. Turn your gaze to the south and you will see what might be the most convoluted terrain imaginable for walking or wagons.
We descended down into the terrain and even though the place looks bleak for life, it seems to be everywhere. We spotted birds, hawks, whole towns of prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, deer and, amazingly, buffalo which are not really buffalo but bison. Everyone just calls them buffalo but they are wrong. If someone wishes to see a buffalo, they should go to Africa.
The Badlands are big sections of easily eroded terrain and the erosion cuts through the material leaving an amazing array of colors arranged as layers in the soil. The colors are pretty spectacular – not as colorful as Bryce but certainly a lot bigger.
On our way back to our camp, we ran across something called Black Hills Speedway where we stopped in to watch the stock car and sprint car races. It is a half mile dirt track and the racing was pretty good, especially the street stock class. It looks like drivers find a 70s through 90s big block passenger cars and take them out to determine whose Sunday-Go-To-Meeting ride is the fastest on dirt. In the final heat, two cars bashed against each other down the final stretch until one of them pulled a nose ahead and won the day. Toward the end of the evening, in the final heat of the non-winged sprints, there was an enormous crash at the very start which took out almost all of the cars in the final heat so we left a little early instead of waiting for the half hour required to pick up all the now-disconnected parts of the formerly pretty racecars.