Badlands, Wall Drugs, Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave

We rose to sunny clear skies and calm winds, quite a contrast to last night's thunderstorm. We went back to the campground and were happy to find our tent intact, albeit having collected many cupfuls of rain water that we needed to pour out. Then we set out Badlands Loops, the 30 mile scenic drive through Badlands national park. The views were stunning and surprising. The ground was sticky from last night's rain.

We exited the park and drove toward the town of Wall, SD, where the "famous" Wall Drug store was. It was a tourist trap with an assortment of souvenir shops, and some people love it nonetheless. We bought some stakes for the tent.

We continued driving toward Rapid City, passing it rapidly, and then got on Scenic Route 87. The road went winding up and down the mountains, giving me motion-sickness. The views were great though. If we were to drive on the same road in the other direction, we would see the heads on Mount Rushmore framed by tunnels cut out in the rocks. We didn't stopped at Mount Rushmore but stopped at a view point 5 miles later to look back to it.

We entered the Wind Cave national park from the north and drove through it toward the visitor center near the southern end of the park. Here we had the first sighting of bisons. We went on the Natural Entrance cave tour. It was interesting and lasted a bit over an hour. We saw a lot of "boxwork", the rock formation that Wind Cave is famous for.

We spent the night camping at the Keyhole State Park in Wyoming.

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Part of trip: Roadtrip: Chicago to Bay Area

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