Traveling to South Dakota, Day 4

 

The Needle

our Bronco coming thru!

Day 4...Time for the Needles Highway...A 14 mile scenic drive totally inside Custer State park in South Dakota. It has sharp switchbacks, granite spires, and narrow single lane rock tunnels. The most famous tunnel, the Needles Eye Tunnel is 8' wide and 9' 9" high. Big truck? Forget it! Glad we weren't traveling in our former Dodge Ram dually. You have to buy a state park pass to enter Custer State Park. It's 30.00 for seven days and we made it worth it, visiting the park three times! It was 48 degrees this morning when we set out--refreshing!

This guy didn't even pull in his mirrors-- brave!

Here you can see the granite spires....

Here you get a little better perspective of the size of the rock formations....

We continued back into the park on the 18 mile wildlife loop once again....We saw 4 pronghorn close to the bison center. And we encountered the "Begging Burros". Sparky almost said "Begging Burritoes", haha. (she always has food on her mind, laughs E.) The first time through the park, the burros were out in a field and couldn't have cared less about the tourist/drivers passing through. They normally come up to your car and stick their noses in your window. This is one of the few exceptions where you are allowed to feed wildlife in the park. Today.....the burros were up close and personal on the southeastern portion of the loop road. 

You can feed them apples or carrots, but not the baby ones, otherwise your fingers will get nipped! There were a lot of people out of their cars and in and amongst the burros, so we kept going. It was more fun years ago, when people stayed in their cars and the burros came right up to you. Today, little kids out of their cars, were getting scared and unsure of how to feed them as the burros can be quite persistent and follow you around!

We saw a sign for bighorn sheep so we went looking for them and drove around Jewel Cave Monument. We didn't stop there as there were no sightings. Phooey! On we go....

We drove on the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway which includes the Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. This is one of America's top ten scenic byways where there are cool bridges and views of Mount Rushmore through tunnels and around bends in addition to the Needles. We did not visit Rushmore, we've done that in previous visits so we kept going. But we did stop for photo ops! More pronghorn...

Here's a view of Mt. Rushmore from the byway...

On the drive, you can see Mt. Rushmore through the tunnel at the other end. We've seen people lay down in the road when there's no traffic coming for a shot of the monument thru the tunnel from a different perspective. Sparky contemplated that for about a few seconds, but cars kept coming behind us so we kept going. (Don't worry, I wouldn't have let her do that, says E.) HA!

Oh! Sparky would be remiss if she didn't share some of the local flora, so here you go....This is called yellow salsify.

A LOT of prairie rose were in bloom all over the park...This is a close up, they are much smaller in the fields.

Sparky was really surprised to see grassland prickly pear blooming everywhere...in South Dakota? Yep. Something you normally see in the southwest desert, but wouldn't think you'd see in a northern state. These were more sparsely scattered, but still everywhere!

There were a lot of thistle poppies blooming as well. Man, do they have sharp, sharp stems! They also have toxic sap, which is poisonous to livestock and humans.

Crazy Horse 2026

On the drive to and from Custer State Park, you pass the ongoing Crazy Horse Monument. We took a shot from the road, again, having visited the monument previously, we had other destinations in mind this time. It's coming along since our last visit. The construction crew has added more modern tech equipment such as robotic track saws which cut through the rock with GIS mapping. This allows them to carve seven times faster than the Mount Rushmore methods. They are now working on the horse's mane and head, Crazy Horse's right shoulder and hairline. No completion date has been set, but the 563 ft. project began in 1948.

Eldy schlepped Sparky around the park and surounding areas for a total of 172 miles today. What a guy! We returned to Rapid City where we were staying, and decided to return to Wild Sage Restaurant next door for a second time, it was that good!

Tomorrow, we head to the Badlands National Park...