This is not actually about Mt. Rushmore. We took a trip to Custer State Park.
To get there, you have to go past Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument and end up in the town of Custer. There is a main highway that goes through the park that is free, but if you want to go off that main road, it is $20 for a week pass. We paid, and it was worth it. The lady who took our money gave us a map and highlighted where the bison and burros were.
The first road we took was the Wildlife Loop. It's a really long loop and the speed limit is 35 (25 on the curvier parts). Here are some pictures of the non-wildlife parts.
There was wildlife too.
We saw the deer first. It was kind of far away. Next were the burros. There were signs everywhere to not approach the wildlife, but as you can see, people ignored that. They walked up to the burros and took selfies. The burros ignored them.
To get to the bison, we had to go way down a dirt road. There were a lot of bison. People did stay away from them. I guess they are mostly wild. They do round them up once a year to give them medication. Other than that, they are free to roam the whole state park.
Next, we went down the Needles Highway. For a long time we wondered why it was called the Needles Highway. We found out why about halfway down the highway. There is a bunch of rocks that are long and skinny. One of them has a hole in it and is called Needle Rock, of course.
Needles Highway is famous for it's tunnels. One of them is only 8 feet wide and 9 feet tall. I had to put my mirrors in so they didn't scrape the walls.
I took the third picture while I was driving and unfortunately, you can see all the bugs on the window.
All the pictures I took are on the South Dakota page. The top menu still doesn't work so use the buttons a little farther down the main page.
In other news, we went to Rapid City today and bought a tailgate mat for the truck. It goes over the tailgate and you put your bikes in the back of the truck with the front wheel over the tailgate. This way we can take the bikes around without having to deal with taking the bike rack off the trailer, put it on the truck, and then put it back on the trailer.
There is a Rails To Trails bike path around here that is over 100 miles long. They took an unused railroad track and made it into a bike path. There are thousands of miles of these bike paths around the country. We will take the bikes out tomorrow. More pictures after that.
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