Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Black Hills of South Dakota







Yesterday we got an early start and headed south towards Custer State Park.  We stopped in Keystone, South Dakota and did some gold panning.  Not an easy thing.  Katy did pretty well.  But the rest of us, not so good.  Mickey put some "pretty rocks" in his jar so he wouldn't leave empty handed.


From Keystone we drove further south through Custer State Park and into Wind Cave National Park. (http://www.wind.cave.national-park.com/)
Wind Cave National Park is an area of rolling prairies where the grass is so tall in places that you have to watch very closely for the wildlife.  We saw Bison, Prong Horn Antelope, Prairie Dogs, White Tail and Mule Deer.  And then there were the donkeys.  They were all along the road and would have held up traffic for hours if you would have let them.  There are signs everywhere that say "Don't feed the animals."  But I guess the donkeys are so cute that some people can't resist.  Sophie liked barking at them, but not as well as she likes barking at Bison.  We can ask her "Where's the buff?" and she'll stand up at the closest window to try to find one.



  From Wind Cave we drove further south again to Hot Springs, South Dakota.  A very pretty old town with a lot of activities.  (http://www.hotsprings-sd.com/)  While in Hot Springs, we toured the Mammoth Site
( http://www.mammothsite.com/ ).  The girls really enjoyed seeing a working dig site.






 In the evening we went to Mount Rushmore National Memorial. (http://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm)   We chose to go late in the evening so that we could be there for the lighting of the memorial and the evening ceremony. It was a really nice program with readings from The Declaration of Independence, a movie about patriotism in the US, and recognition of all past and present Veterans in the audience.  We're glad we went late in the day.  What a beautiful site!

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