Amazing South Dakota, part 2

After 2 days of touring near Rapid City, SD, Tim needed a break. He decided to stay at the campground for a day with Trent and relax. Well, he did catch up on our laundry so it wasn’t total relaxation for him. While he did that, I decided to drive Needles Highway through Custer State Park. I knew that Tim would not like this drive with the tight hairpin turns, rock tunnels and lots of steep drop offs. I told him afterwards that the drive through Badlands National Park was kiddie land compared to this drive. Needles Highway is not for the faint of heart!

The day started off a little cool and cloudy but it wasn’t raining so who could complain about that! It took me a while to get to the north entrance of Needles Highway but the drive was well worth it. Even before the entrance, the road climbed up in elevation and the views of the Black Hills were amazing. Then, you enter the park and wind up to a beautiful lake and start to see the rugged, needlelike granite formations jutting up to the sky. Just WOW; so spectacular!

Needles Highway is 14 miles long and I read that you should expect the drive to take 45-60 minutes. I took a bit more than an hour for the drive. I enjoyed the views at each stop and spent a little time in the gift shops near both Sylvan Lake and Legion Lake Lodge. Of course it would be difficult to go much faster than 25 mph as you traverse the hair pin turns and tunnels on this road. I was nervous taking the truck through the tunnels but since large vehicles were ahead of me, I knew that I could fit. Needles Eye Tunnel is only 8 ft. wide. I was really glad that we no longer have a dually truck!

After traversing Needles Highway, I decided to drive the Wildlife Loop road. According to what I read online, there is a 1,300 head bison herd in the park and many gather along this road. While I enjoyed the drive and saw other wildlife, I never saw the bison herd. I learned afterwards that the visitor’s center provides information on where to find the herd. I somehow missed that but I didn’t get to the visitor’s center until I was almost finished with the drive. As I got to the end of the Wildlife Loop Road, I finally saw a few bison and they could have been the same 3 that Tim and I saw a couple days earlier. It was definitely near the same area of the park.

I enjoyed the ride and saw some other wildlife along the way. I saw the prairie dogs in a few spots as well as spotted a pronghorn in the distance. The most entertaining section was where the burros were on the road begging for carrots at the vehicles. It was entertaining but also a bit tricky to navigate along the road and around the burros.

i think this is a pronghorn but not certain. i had to zoom i to get the pictures and see it better

With the stops along the way, I probably spent another hour and a half on the Wildlife Loop Road, with at least a half hour stop at the Bison Center. While they didn’t have any bison in the corrals, there was quite a bit of interesting information regarding bison in the center so it is worth the stop. It was good that I left early in the morning because I think it took me almost 45 minutes to get to the entrance to the park, then I spent probably at least 3 hours in the park. I ended up on a side of the park that was closer to the campground, so luckily it was only about a 30 minute drive back and I was pretty hungry by then.

After grabbing a late lunch in the campground, Tim and I decided to head over to see the Crazy Horse Memorial which is another inspiring place. While the mountain carving of Crazy Horse on his horse is still a work in progress, it is definitely worth a visit. This huge mountain carving/memorial honors all Indigenous people of North America and their cultural values.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the Indian Museum of North America and were very impressed with all of the displays. I especially enjoyed reading how the Crazy Horse Memorial is not to memorialze Crazy Horse himself. It memorializes his spirit and stands as a reminder of the shared values of the various Native American tribes like respecting differences, embracing diversity and striving for unity.

We completed our visit watching a talk by Native American woman who presented information about their culture and shared some history of their dances. Two of her daughters demonstrated the dances during the program. She was a very interesting speaker and shared her personal story as well as her tribe’s history. At the end, she talked about a couple of children’s books that she had written that focused on diversity and unity. Of course, I had to buy a couple of the books for the grandchildren.

As you can see, we really enjoyed South Dakota. On our last day, we decided we had seen what we wanted to see so we left early and headed north to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. We were so close to there so we just had to go. Look for more on that stop in the next post.

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