Thursday, August 30, 2018

Monumental Day!

Yesterday we took the bus tour of Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, the Needles, and Crazy Horse. Bus tours are fun because someone else does the driving and you learn so much. Our driver, Rory, was a great source of information and corny jokes.

The first stop was Mount Rushmore where we tried to take telephoto pictures using our binoculars. It actually worked, but it was hard to get everything all lined up. 




We then drove across three pigtail bridges and through a few tunnels, as we drove up to the State Game Lodge where we had buffalo stew for lunch.

Pigtail bridges are tight corkscrews where the road goes under a little bridge then immediately loops back over itself, crossing the bridge and gaining altitude quickly.

After lunch we headed into the Needles where we went through the smallest tunnel yet. It was so tight that the driver had to back up twice to position the rear wheels of the bus properly to align the bus with the tunnel. We were featured in several tourist's videos as we crept through the tunnel at two miles per hour with mere inches to spare on each side.

Next we took a break at beautiful Sylvan Lake before heading towards Crazy Horse.

We arrived at Crazy Horse Memorial around 4:00pm. There is a nice Native American museum and several exhibits about the artist and his dream.


The size of this memorial is astounding and they say it might take 150 more years to complete.


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