Monday, June 18, 2012

Road to Sturgis: Part 2


Our second day on the road consisted of driving from Mitchell to Keystone, South Dakota. Our roadside goals for this trip were to see the Badlands and Mount Rushmore, but we got lucky with a couple other finds.

As you head down I90, the opportunity will come to exit onto the Badlands Scenic Byway. If you have the time, it's definitely worth the detour. It's difficult to do the Badlands justice with photos, but here are some attempts:



 

We took quite a few more pictures, and you can see them on the Flickr account.

Once we finished the Badlands, we headed on towards Keystone, where Mount Rushmore is located. On the way, we saw this unusual site by the roadside:


That's a “Goat Bridge” designed to lure tourists into the Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo. The goats seemed to enjoy hanging out on the bridge.

We finally arrived at Mount Rushmore and discovered the sun was in almost exactly the wrong place for photos, but we gave it our best shot.


Outside the Mount Rushmore gift shop, we found this interesting historical tidbit. Thomas Jefferson was not only an author of the Declaration of Independence, but he also was recorded as creating one of the first known ice cream recipes!


Keystone is a neat little town nestled in the Black Hills. Here's the view from our hotel parking lot:



Just up the road was an interesting abandoned mine – it appeared that work was still going on in an adjacent plant.


On our way out of town the next morning, we stopped in Rapid City to pick up some supplies and took a quick detour to the town's Dinosaur Park. These dinosaurs were built in the 1930s by the WPA on the highest point in the city.


In the parking lot, we found a historical marker commemorating the “Hangman's Hill” just up the road, where two outlaws were hung in the 1800s. On the way back, we discovered that this ghastly place was actually in someone's front yard:




Plus side: great view of the city.

Tomorrow: Devil's Tower, Hulett Museum guns, and Indian guns!

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