Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore



Mount Rushmore


I'm going to start off with today’s post with “I LOVE the Black Hill in South Dakota”!! More on that in a few....

By the time we got up yesterday, 8am, most of the campground had cleared out. People must be in a hurry to get on the road and start their day. It seems that half of the campground were bikes so I'm sure they are all anxious to get up to Sturgis to start the rally. Scott sure has been enjoying checking out all of the bikes as they pass us and we pass them. I'm sure he's dreaming about buying another one someday....

 

We ate breakfast burritos that Scott pre-made in Peoria, they were delish! I didn't sleep great last night, it was a little on the sticky side and the wind picked up. The wind ended up blowing over our grill in the bed of the truck and I could have sworn there was "someone" out there...so needless to say, I didn't get the best night’s sleep.

Corn Palace - The murals are made of corn and wheat.

Our first stop was in the town of Mitchell, SD (population around 800) at the Corn Palace. We then headed over to Cabellas to purchase a tarp....just in case we run into rain at some point on this trip.

The scenery has changed a bit from the day before. There were a ton of corn fields in and around Mitchell, but once we got outside of the town about 30 miles it changed to cows and wheat fields. There's still rolling hills, but not as green. We've now traveled about 1400 miles and have changed time zones twice since we embarked on this trip. One other thing that we noticed on the drive is all of the billboards. It seems that there is one every 50 yards, it's crazy. Most are advertising touristy things like Wall Drug (I guess that's a huge drug store...), and then random farms and animal habitats open to the public. It's definitely entertaining reading all of these signs.

Badlands National Park:

Badlands National Park

What a beautiful park. It doesn't seem like it's going to be much because you're just driving through hills and grasslands/prairie and then out of nowhere there are these amazing rock formations. The majority of the park is made up of grasslands and prairie and then of course the rock formations.  The park is neat because there’s a drive all the way through it with many viewpoint stops but of course both Scott and I have to go on a couple hikes to really feel like we’ve seen the park. 

Big Horn Sheep

We decided to do a short 1.5 mile round trip hike through the rock formations (Notch Trail).  About 10 minutes into our first hike we end up spotting a male Big Horn Sheep, he was beautiful!! The sheep seemed so tame and at times was only about 20 yards from us just eating his lunch and hanging out. It was so cool just hanging out with him.  Around the same time that we saw the sheep we also saw a toad and frog...was I in heaven, I just love all of the animals. When we reached the turn-a-round point on the trail we also spotted two deer in the wide open. As we were almost back at the trailhead we ended up spotting three more Big Horn Sheep, all females, in the distance; they didn't get as close as the first one, but definitely close enough to check them out. You can say that my day was made after this point! While we were in the Badlands we figured we should also do a grasslands/prairie hike. That was fun but I should have worn long pants...what was I thinking?

We noticed that the sky was darkening about a mile into the hike and decided to turn around (Medicine Root Trail). Besides, we both figured that once we've seen one area of grasslands we've seen them all. It's a good thing we decided to turn around when we did because once we got back in the truck and drove a little ways it started raining and lightning.

The last portion of our Badlands Tour was on a dirt road overlooking the Wilderness area. There's a herd of about 800 Bison who roam the grasslands and prairie areas and Scott and I were hoping to spot them. After it was all said and done we saw two. They were very far off in the distance, but they are huge so they were easy to spot. To actually see the features of the buffalo we had to use the binoculars. They were cool! I can't wait to see huge herds in Yellowstone later this week! As we were leaving the park we got to see many prairie dogs as well as a badger. Neither Scott nor I had ever seen a badger so that was really cool. Badgers are bigger than what I though and really neat looking. The badger was in the same area as the prairie dogs and the prairie dogs were not happy. It was cool seeing them all together and hearing the prairie dog’s calls of alarm.

Black Hills National Forest and Mount Rushmore:

Mount Rushmore with all 50 State Flags

“Wow!” is all I can say about the black hills. Scott and I have been truly enjoying the trip up until this point but once we hit the Black Hills we both felt somewhat at home. Could the Black Hills of South Dakota be our next home....? Have I told you that I LOVE the mountains!!!

About 20 minutes before we reached Mount Rushmore we went from grasslands to mountains and pine trees. Both Scott and I rolled our windows down to take in the breathtaking scenery and smell the sweet scent of pine. It was awesome!! The temperature also dropped from the mid 80's to the 70's. It was beautiful!!

The Mount Rushmore Monument was amazing but unfortunately we didn't get to spend much time there. We had spent so much time at the Badlands earlier in the day that we were in somewhat of a rush to get to our campground to check in before 8pm. It truly is amazing though seeing those faces carved in the rock!

We camped last night in a campground outside of the Black Hills National Forest. The campground is in a beautiful location, set down into kind of a valley with the mountains surrounding. There's a creek that runs just behind our campsite, it is awesome. I would camp in these conditions any day over staying in the nicest hotel. When we set-up camp the weather was in the 60's with little humidity, it was perfect. We had a fire last night and we were both loving life.

A storm came through as we slept, it was nice. We could hear the creek behind us, a light rain on the tent, and see the lightning. I slept perfect last night! We woke up today to a beautiful start to the day, blue skies and a few clouds...and then it started to rain.

Our original plans were to head up to Sturgis and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota today but we're enjoying the Black Hills National Forest so much that we're staying an extra night. We're planning on hiking today, taking in the Crazy Horse Monument (this one is supposed to be bigger than Mount Rushmore) and if there's time hopefully take in Wind Cave National Park. It would be nice to also see the lighting on Mount Rushmore this evening, but we'll have to see if there's time.

That's about it for us today, sorry I didn't post last night, but we didn't have a strong enough signal at our campsite last night. More to come today!!!