The Best Detour

Having heard little about the state, South Dakota had a good chance at exceeding our expectations from the moment we arrived. However, even if we had high hopes, the Mt. Rushmore State would have over delivered on anything that any guide book or brochure had promised. We came to see some old presidents carved into a mountain, and found a slice of country that is almost unmatched. In the south western corner we visited, there is so much to see, it’s a hard place to leave.

After watching the sunrise upon the colossal faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, we traveled through the Black Hills and gazed at the massive boulders that seem to shoot straight up out of the forest. We took the twisted highway 16 through Custer State Park, known for its coiled wooden “pigtail” bridges and skinny tunnels that pierce through some giant slabs of granite.
We spent a day in Wind Cave National Park, featuring 129 miles of cave cramped under only one square mile of earth. The cave has only one natural entrance that the average American definitely would not fit through. We explored just two miles of Wind Cave and reached a depth of over 200 feet. Although the park is known for its vast underground network, the surface is also spectacular. Bison, pronghorn antelope, white tail deer and prairie dogs roamed the grasslands by the hundreds.
We capped off our time in South Dakota with Badlands National Park, where a hundred miles of South Dakota’s dry plains is abruptly interrupted by fantastic pinnacles and deep canyons of colorful petrified rock. Leaving the state, we were treated to an incredible sunset to the west and a full moon rising into the dark blue sky to the east.

Looks like Wyoming will have some big shoes to fill…