July 23, 2009 - Rapid City, SD/Lake Park Campground

Lucky again! Another beautiful start to the day. It's cool now, but weather forecasts indicate it will be in the 90's here today. We're moving on, though. We're moving east to Iowa.

I don't want to forget about yesterday. We went to Mount Rushmore. Our visit coincided with some news about Greenpeace protesters who had "visited" earlier in the month and climbed up on top of the presidents' faces to hang a banner against global warming. There was criticism that security at Mount Rushmore was not tight enough. Oh, well. We had a good time. The place is huge with lots of indoor and outdoor space and it was packed with people. We saw a short video about the origin and building of the monument.

Then we went a few miles to see a similar monument to Crazy Horse, also carved out of granite. One man started building it alone in the 40's. His family is continuing it today. They have funded the whole project with donations only and will not accept any federal money.

We drove to Hill City for lunch, hearing that it was a cute town. Cute town if you like tacky, in our opinion.

Then off to Custer State Park. We saw more wildlife there than in all of Yellowstone and Teton. It's a huge park with some incredible natural rock formations. There's an area they call Needles Highway. Just imagine very tall, skinny rocks that seem to grow out of the ground. On Wildlife Loop Road we saw over a hundred buffalo. Just when we were about to think we wouldn't see a thing, we started seeing a few here and there and then we saw large herds. Some were in the street. It's crazy that they have all that beautiful green grass to eat and then they seem to be eating sand. You should hear the sounds they make! They're just grunting and growling all the time. We also saw tons of prong horns. They're a lot smaller and didn't come so close to the road but we had an opportunity to get some pretty good looks at them. And let's not forget the lowly prairie dogs. It was fun to see all the little mounds on the ground and see them scurrying all over the place.

One thing I've noticed about this area is how perfectly lovely all the lawns are. They talk about how dry it is here, but they don't know dry. The grass here is so green and it's the kind of grass you just want to sit on because it looks so soft and fine.

We got some new neighbors last night--a couple from Vero Beach, FL, driving one of the campers that people rent. Maybe you've seen them--they say Cruise America on the side. They're a really nice couple who are originally from NJ. One of their sons is a West Point grad who served two tours in Iraq. The guy told us such an interesting story about how he started camping before it was cool. His father was a postal worker and got 5 weeks vacation every summer. He would pack up the wife and four kids in the station wagon with a rack he built on the top. They would head out somewhere to camp. They actually camped in Alaska in the 50's, if you can imagine. He said one day his brother was out on a "nature walk", so he could smoke a cigarette without being caught. A forest ranger grabbed him and put him to work fighting a huge forest fire. His parents had no knowledge of this and were left to wonder for 2 days what had happened to their son. The forest ranger returned the son with an apology. He had a number of stories like that to tell. We had a good time listening!