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Well here I am rested up and ready to tackle catching everyone up on our marvelous day yesterday, as well as what has gone on today. It is amazing what a good night’s sleep will do. By the way Brently—here is the weather report for you...when we got up this morning it was 56 degrees outside and 60 degrees inside. You can shudder now...
YESTERDAY
Picking up at Custer State Park just after we left our gentlemen with the well pedigreed Ford truck at the Blue Bell Lodge:
Wildlife Loop Road
We continued on our road trip up the Wildlife Loop Road. It is a 18 mile road that takes visitors through open grasslands and pine-speckled hills that much of the park’s wildlife call home. On this drive we saw Prairie Dogs, deer (and one precious bouncing little fawn!), prong horn antelope and buffalo (also known as bison), and the park favorite—Burros. Although we did have rain off and on all day, our drive was a good one. Changing weather also changes how you view different things. The wild clouds rushing over the rough rocked mountains give a more surreal view than you get on a sunny
day.
We saw signs of the huge (70,000 acre) fires that attacked the area last year. It will be generations before things looked as they did before it happened I am sure, but you can already see the grasses coming back so life is sturdy and does go on.
Needles Highway
From the Wildlife Loop road, we headed to the Needles Highway. It is more than a 14-mile road—it’s a spectacular drive through pine and spruce forests, meadows surrounded by birch and aspen and rugged granite mountains. The road’s name comes from the needle-like granite formations which seem to pierce the horizon along the highway. While traversing this, our second grand drive of the day, we saw a BIg Horn Sheep crossing the road in front of us, a small herd of buffalo on the side of a hill that we drove by, and (John’s favorite) a HUGE male buffalo all by itself within ten feet of the road! It didn’t look real it was so big and perfect. Amazingly enough we saw it again—in the same spot when we came back around several hours later.
The temperature had cooled
down to 48 degrees by 4:15 and we had fairly rainy weather through this part of our drive. The pictures I took in no way reveal the spectacularly beautiful views that we saw. This is a drive that we could not have done in our RV as we had to drive through several VERY narrow and short tunnels that are carved out of the living granite rocks. The smallest one was 8’ 4” wide by 11’ 3” tall. Since Mufasa is 96” wide (plus our side mirrors) it would not have ended well!! We had amazing views of the “Needles” and the whole drive was breathtaking.
Iron Mountain Road
This winding road runs between Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the junction of US 16A and SD 36. Constructed in 1933, only a portion of this road lies within Custer Park, but it is a must-see. Along the highway, visitors will find wildfire exhibits, pigtail bridges, magnificent Black Hills scenery, and tunnels that frame Mount Rushmore. Be sure to check out the picture below that gives all the statistics concerning curves, switchbacks, pigtails, tunnels and splits! It is amazing. We thoroughly enjoyed this leg
of our journey also. The monstrous granite boulders that make up these mountains make you feel very insignificant in size as you drive by them.
After finishing the third leg of our trip we headed back to Rapid City, arriving in town a little after 7:00. We stopped to fill up the rental car with fuel and then decided to eat before we headed back to the KOA. Wendy’s was our choice as we were both too tired to try a “sit down” dinner and wanted to get back to camp. It was indeed a long day.
We drove 175 miles.
TODAY
Today was a complete opposite of yesterday—not a cloud in sight for most of the morning with a freshly rain washed blue, blue sky. We really took our time getting started this morning as we didn’t want to arrive at our new home away from home until after 12 or 1:00.
While we were in downtown Historic Rapid City yesterday we had seen an interesting city park a block or two down from where we had our fabulous breakfast and John especially wanted to get a closer
look. Thus, our first stop of the day was back into town. Since it was Sunday morning there was very little traffic and plenty of parking. We parked and then walked up to Main Street Square. Located in the heart of Downtown Rapid City, Main Street Square is a fun-filled public space that features special events, arts and culture, live concerts, seasonal ice skating and interactive fountains. Surrounded by the City of Presidents, boutiques, eateries and galleries, Main Street Square is a destination the whole family can enjoy. The sculptures in the park are mesmerizing and the area was being used on this Sunday morning by families that seemed to be having a wonderful time.
From downtown we went on to Fort Walmart for a small amount of items that we wanted. Laura and Tom—the parking lot reminded us of the one in Colorado we stopped at on our way to South Fork a few years ago—MANY RVs parked and the passengers must have all been inside Walmart along with several thousand of their best friends because we have NEVER been in one that crowded!
From Wally World we stopped at Red Ass Winery for a wine tasting
of Red Ass Rhubarb wine. Since I didn’t have my personal wine steward with me (where are you when I need you, Pat R.?) we didn’t purchase any but rather headed on to Trailside Park Resort and our home for the next 7 nights. We arrived around 2:30 and have a good site with Spring Creek running right behind us. We can hear motorcycles cruising by fairly regularly—touring the Black Hills and Sturgis I assume. The big rally is next month, but Sturgis is apparently a big draw all summer.
It feels good to just sit and “be” for a while. The temperature is 70 with low humidity and a light breeze so we have windows and door open. We have no plans to do anything else today and we will just have to see what tomorrow brings!
We drove a grand total of 35 miles today.
PS—the wifi has suddenly gotten weaker as folks have come into camp and I am having a little trouble correctly captioning pictures and getting some of my “set up” on the page to do as I want. I have decided to go ahead and publish and go back
in and edit when I have more “juice”. I think you can figure out things anyway! Enjoy!
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Laura Shade
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Beautiful!
Those are gorgeous pictures you have posted! I understand about Walmart...it is a must for campers. Tom and I have already been talking about how we can plan meals because we will have one in Salida and in Alamosa before going to Southfork! It makes life so much easier. =). Love you!