More sights in South Dakota

On our way to see more sights around Custer, South Dakota we stopped to have lunch at a lake and saw this cute little duck trying to sleep on this floating piece of wood.


We visited Mount Rushmore. They have a great visitors center with a movie and lots of information about how and when and by whom the beautiful carvings were created. There is no charge to visit this area but there is a $10 charge by the concessionaires to park. It is so magnificent and so much bigger than I ever imagined.

We also drove around the corner on our way to the Crazy Horse Memorial and noticed that through the trees we could see a profile of President Washington.

We drove past the Crazy Horse Memorial but did not go into the site. But I did snap this photo from a parking lot. Others said we should have gone - maybe next time !

We did go to Wind Cave National Park which is just south of Custer State Park. This park was established in 1903 and preserves a great diversity of resources including one of the renowned caves of the world. This park is the 7th oldest National Park.

Regarded as sacred by American Indians, the cave was not found by settlers until 1881, when two brothers, Jesse & Tom Bingham, heard a loud whistling noise. The sound led them to a small hole in the ground, the cave's only natural opening.

It was left to later adventurers like ALvin McDonald to follow the wind and discover the cave's extensive network of passageways containing boxwork, popcorn and frost-work formations.

About 60 million years ago, the forces that uplifted the Rocky Mountains also uplifted the modern Black Hills, producing large fractures and cracks in the overlying limestone. Over millions of years, water moving slowly through those cracks dissolved the limestome to produce the complex maze of the cave's passages.

There are over one hundred miles of passage ways that have been discovererd so far.

There are also a lot of stairs we went up and down to see the sights. But it was well worth it.

The pictures of the Gordon Stockade are below. This stockade was preserved by the state

and the picture below that is one that was re-constructed to show you exactly what they looked like and how they were lived in.

See ya down the road !