Westward 2011, Day 4

So, today we drove around Custer State Park, in the middle of South Dakota's Black Hills. Amazing. Saw a bunch of antelope, bison, and prairie dogs, not to mention more beautiful things like golden eagles soaring high above. We found a pull-off where there was a herd of wild (relatively) burros surrounded by people taking photos of and feeding them. They were so tame I could even pet a couple of them, which was pretty cool. The landscape of the whole area was astounding: the Black Hills seemed to be comparable to the Appalachians in height, but what a difference in habitats and animal life! In a nutshell, it's prairie grassland mixed in with rocky outcrops and thick pine forests.

The Needles Highway is a narrow mountain road traversing the northwest portion of the park, and the scenery there was something else in and of itself. The Needles are giant rocky outcrops which stand straight up into the sky off the hilltops. We traveled through several tunnels along this road, barely making it through with our F-150, and thought we were going to fall off the cliffs around several u-turns without guard rails. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

We came back to Keystone afterward and I bought a nice leather cowboy hat, which I've wanted for a while. I also bought a sweet leather biker's jacket for $100. That's dang cheap for a good leather jacket, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Tomorrow we're traveling into Wyoming toward Yellowstone. We've been doing a lot of driving and not a lot of relaxing, so the trip itinerary may change more, depending on how much down time we need to allot for ourselves.

Here's a picture of the Black Hills in Custer State Park:

Peace.