Forests do not conform to the lines of man!

Our plan today was to hit Mt. Rushmore and then Wind Cave. But, when you sleep in an hour later then intended, plans can change. Park Rangers chuckling at your plans can inspire you to change them too.

We left for Rushmore around 8:45am from Custer. Our drive thru the Black Hills National Forest took us thru some tight "pigtail" bends and one lane tunnels with perfect views of Rushmore. We stayed at Mt. Rushmore for about an hour at most. Our reactions ranged from "exactly what we expected", to "underwhelming", to "not worth the hubub". Or the $11 entrance fee... we couldn't even use the $80 National Parks pass!

After hearing some advice from a Rushmore Park Ranger, we decided to skip the drive back down to Wind Cave National Park, and instead head north for Deadwood, Spearfish Canyon, and Montana. We had planned to try to skip out to Cody, WY for a rodeo, but rodeos are a dime a dozen.

On our way to Deadwood, we stopped at a Winery along the side of the road for five free samples... Not too bad, considering I'm not much of a wine person. Deadwood was interesting, a little slow, but $2 minimum blackjack. Kyle and I lost our obligatory $10, but at least we all got free drinks out of it. From there we went further north into Spearfish, where the three bulls took a dive into a creek on the side of the road. The whole drive through the Black Hills was incredible. The trees were tall, lush, and tightly packed: so tightly packed that they look black from afar. They continued well into Wyoming and parts of Montana. (hence, the title.)

Once in Wyoming, we made our way to the Devil's Tower National Monument. It's a 1,200 ft plateau rising out of the Black Hills. We weren't expecting much, but the view from the base was quite inspiring. The huge plateau was surrounded by a huge rock quarry, which we quickly decided that we could climb up. Far too much fun jumping around on rocks. Looking straight up at the peak of Devil's Tower gave off some crazy feelings of vertigo. The manner and style of the vertical columns reminded me of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning a bit.

We left Devil's Tower around 5:30pm, headed for our first hotel stay of the trip in Red Lodge, Montana, stopping midway of the 350 mile drive for dinner in Sheridan, WY. Tomorrow we drive the Beartooth Pass into Yellowstone National Park!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Confound the Kremlin

Intelligence Committee