Vacation Day 7 (More of the Black Hills)

Monday (July 29) – Trip day 7 (Around Mount Rushmore) – We took it slow this morning – it is one day we don’t have to jump up and get going.  We ate at the hotel restaurant as there really isn’t much else here for food.  It was overpriced and only fair food.  We went back up to Rushmore in the daylight – under nice clear skies.  I wanted to see more of the displays and of course Barbara wanted souvenirs. 

From the avenue of flags of the states 

Love this picture.

 From there we went a few miles south to the Crazy Horse monument.  This is a private endeavor and if ever finished it will be huge.  It will 563 feet high and 641 feet long.  By comparison, Mount Rushmore would fit on the head area of Crazy Horse.  Blasting started in 1948.  The artist died in 1982 and the family continued to work on the monument.  In 1998 the face was finally finished.  It is run by a private nonprofit foundation that supports the Native Americans in this area.  It has a large Indian museum and one day will also house a university medical campus for Indians.
This is the extent of how much has been done - long way to go.

 The monument is intended to look like this some day.  Sitting Bull is pointing to his lands.

 .  From there we went down to the town of Custer for lunch and to scout out food possibilities for the morning.  Finding none we found a grocery store and purchased food for the morning.  From Custer we traveled east to the Custer State Park.  I wanted to see some new territory and possibly some animals.  We were able to see some mountain goats along the highway, a family of buffalo out in a meadow, and several white tailed deer.
Mountain goats along the road.

 A long way off but there is a buffalo out there and a couple of babies are behind out of site.

 .  It rained off and on most of the day after we left Custer.  Because of all of this rain this country is so beautifully green.  The only drawback is the millions of pine trees that are dying due to being infested by Pine Bark Beatles.
No, the leaves are not changing - those are dead trees in the middle of the picture.

 We took a really narrow and windy road back to Keystone that included 3 small tunnels and at least one place where the road made a total loop around a hill actually crossing over itself.  It was like a corkscrew.