Wyoming to South Dakota

On Tuesday we left Canyon Campground (Yellowstone, Wyoming) around 9am to try and get to Rapid City, South Dakota before the end of the day. 

  

 We left via the Yellowstone east entrance, through the Shoshone national forest. There was loads of crazy rocky terrain and horse ranches.

                    

On the drive we passed ‘Buffalo Bill Reservoir’ so we stopped to have a look. The dam was really impressive especially because it was built so long ago to ensure that the pioneers would have water in the area during the dry summer months. 

Next we crossed over ‘Big Horn Basin’ stopping in a little town called ‘Basin’ for lunch.  The grasslands were very cool you could see why the early settlers came to the area to farm cattle and buffalo. 

Our drive continued through ‘Ten sleeps’ canyon and ‘Big Horn National Forest’ all amazing but a very big climb for poor Hank we reached an elevation of 9,666ft. At the top was a lake and ‘Big Horn’ ski hill. The rest of the afternoon was very long but we finally made it into South Dakota and the black hills area.

We stopped off at Sturgis, which is famous for a huge motorbike rally in August so we had to get dad a Harley souvenir. The Harley Davidson store closed at 6pm which was bad timing cause it was about 6:10, but luckily because we were Australian the lady who was closing up let us in for a quick 5 min shop… 3 min later we had a badge and t-shirt for dad. 

Rapid city was just down the road but by this stage both Marc and I had had enough. We found a RV park only 5 miles out of Rapid City called ‘Happy Holiday Resort’. It was a really nice site in some trees with water, electricity and Wi-Fi!

Tuesday night we finally had a good nights sleep with no mozzies and freezing temperatures. I had checked the weather the night before and it said scattered showers so we got up early Wednesday to go to Mt Rushmore. It was probably about a 20 min drive from where we were based. 

 

Keystone a small town just outside of Mt Rushmore had a tacky old world charm, with flashing billboards everywhere. On approach to Mt Rushmore we finally saw the presidents, it was very cool and I was really excited to actually see it. The size of the sculptures in the side of the mountain was amazing. Especially once you learn how they actually sculpted the faces in the granite using dynamite and jackhammers. 

That afternoon we went into Rapid City to get the car checked out (ABS break light) and stock up on supplies. While the car was being look at we went to the historic main street and went to the Firehouse brewery for lunch. It was a cool brewery with ok house beer and good pub food.