We spent the entire day in the Black Hills of South Dakota. From a distance, they really are black. They say it is because the hills are mostly Ponderosa pine, whose needles don’t reflect light very well.
We started the day with a visit to Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane’s graves in Deadwood. Afterwards we took a ride on an 1880 vintage railroad train (Jeanne in the rail car). It was a two-hour ride at high speed – 10 MPH! They use the same rails that took ore out of the hills 130 years ago. We both enjoyed the ride. After the ride we drove to Wind Cave National Park but found that the next available cave tour was in 2 hours so we moved on to Custer State Park. That was a good move as we saw great prairie scenery and tons of animals on the drive – bison, turkeys, mules, pronghorn antelope, deer and prairie dogs. After that we went to Mount Rushmore. I’m not sure I can do justice to the description so I’ll just say it was totally amazing and one of the top sights of the trip. We walked the base trail to see views of the monument that you don’t normally see and on the way we saw a Rocky Mountain goat.
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