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5-10-07
Our last sight seeing day took us to Mt. Rushmore, Black Hills, and the Badlands. To tell you the truth, I was getting kind of worn out with the picture taking, but it was almost over. We stayed in a Best Western in Kimball, Nebraska the night before. We tried eating at a Subway the night before that right in Kimball, and it is by FAR the worst experience any of us has ever had. It was terrible. First we had to wait over half and hour it seemed like in line, then the big guy behind the counter kept wiping his nose with his forearm and never changed his gloves. Why we paid for the sandwiches I don't know, but we ended up throwing them in the trash and ate at a Dairy Queen instead. Anyway, after leaving that town, we made our way through the NE panhandle up west. I've heard of the sand hills before in the past and thought it was some cool tourist attraction. Boy was I wrong. It looked like any other scenery we had seen along the entire trip before. There was only a little bit of sand showing a few places, and that was it. I was expecting to see dunes and stuff. Not what I expected at all. Skipping way ahead once again, we entered this town called Hot Springs. This was one of the coolest towns I have ever seen. Everything was so clean. The buildings were all the older style westerns but well kept up. It was a great town to drive through. Shortly after leaving there, we saw a sign that said "Large Wildlife on Road". We sort of laughed at that since we don't see anything like that around home. As soon as we turned the bend, sure enough there were four buffalo. So, that was pretty cool. We couldn't stop to get any shots of them, but we'd have more opportunities. There was a little spot up the road where we could pull off, and there was a turkey vulture gnawing on something in the road so why not.
Notice the prarie dogs in the background. Those things cracked me up.
A little futher up the road, we saw the entrace to Wind Cave. What interested us about this though was this huge buffalo just chillin' on the grass pretty close to the road. So, why not.
This was my first ever encounter with one of these animals. Man these things are massive. We grab just a few shots here and continue on down the road. Once realizing we couldn't go any further, we turned around and shot back up. As soon as we came back up to this beast, he stood up really quick. I honestly thought he was getting irritated.
It almost looked like he was eyeing us, getting ready to charge. I was getting a little nervous at the thought of this mammoth ramming our rental car. What was he doing?
Oh.............nevermind.
Back to the prarie dogs. These things looked pretty funny when they stood on their hind feet and chirping like a mix between a tiny dog and a bird. They were pretty skiddish, but thanks to the zoom lens I was able to grab a few quick shots.
Showing me what they think of me.
Got him in mid-dive.
We continued north and came across some more buffalo. So, we pulled off again. There was this prarie dog that kept sending off warning signs to another one about 50 feet from him. I tried to approach him really slow but he wasn't having it. These things were very scared.
This is part of the Black Hills here. There was some sort of park up the way, but it was closed. You also can't see it here, but there are about 6 buffalo way out in a field too.
Oh yeah, the buffalo....I took some shots of them, but nothing really too impressive. They got bored with us and moved on
.So, off we go to Mt. Rushmore. We saw this Crazy Horse monument right on our way, so we decided to stop on in. Whoops! Twenty bucks and 5 minutes later we were back on the road. We drove up and all that that was there was a face carved in stone. It wasn't even close to being finished yet. So, I figured I'd put this in here considering we paid $20 to get it.
So, on to Rushmore. You know, I have seen so many pictures on the internet and TV of this place it really kind of spoiled it for me. I already knew what to expect. The story is really cool in how it began, but it's really a place I can just say I visited and don't have to go back to again. I don't know, I just think after Pike's Peak nothing really seemed as interesting.
The ampitheatre at the bottom of the hill.
It was getting a little later in the day at this point so we hightailed it out of there. We really wanted to get to the Badlands before it was too dark. Well, as it turned out, the Badlands were kind of a letdown. There were some cool rock formations I suppose, but I just wasn't too impressed. I don't know if it was just exhaustion or what, but my camera trigger finger was getting a little tired. We took the "loop" through the park which might not have been the best idea. The road was all red gravel and it was very loose. There were parts of the roads that were just flat out horrible also. Poor car.
There were a few areas where it just really opened up to nothing to space, which was kind of cool.
I don't know...just wasn't that impressive.
Ok, now this next picture sucks. It's out of focus, can't really make anything out, but I only post this since it was kind of an ongoing thing throughout most of the trip. I first saw my first antelope way back in Kansas and since then couldn't manage to get one on video camera or still. Finally we saw two stopped on a hill so I had to get at least one shot.
So after I conquered that quest, it was pretty much over for me photogrpahy-wise. Took a few more as we exited the scenic route.
So we headed to Wall, SD. But, this road just went on and on and on......and on and on. It didn't seem like it would ever stop. Nature was calling for both of us so finally we deciced to just use the road as our rest stop. Might as well grab a few more.
Here's the road I was talking about. What a long, ugly, messy stretch of gravel. This was the very last picture taken on this vacation. Sad to see it end.
Afer we arrived in Wall, we gave the car a much needed wash. We found this little mom and pop restaurant in town and was VERY good! It was easily the best meal of the entire trip. I ordered trout and Joel ordered some salmon. Both meals were so good that we decided to stop for breakfast there on the way out too. Breakfast was great as well. I wish I knew the name of that restaurant now.
So, that's it! Now we head for home. We knew it was going to be a long trip, but we were sort of ready for it. We left for home at approximately 12:00 CT. We actually left at 11, but that was mountain time. We crossed the time zone a little down the road. So, that's it! That was our vacation. Even though no tornadoes were bagged, we still saw some great storms. We both felt we made the most of this trip. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It's just too bad it went too fast. I guess that's par for the course.
Joel came up with this chart. This is pretty cool to see exactly where we went. All the black dots are places we stayed. Total round trip: 3,600 miles. Ahh, what a week!
