The Last Day---at Mt. Rushmore

Our last day!  

We woke up to a cloudy, cool day, but a nice day to travel around and see the sights. We decided on Custer State Park and Crazy Horse Memorial. As we were driving around the Park, we noticed we were NOT the only travelers. We kept seeing these long lines of cars coming our way, not just cars, but all kinds of Porshe's. I guess they were having some kind of 'road rally' and picked Custer State  Park to drive through!!

 First, just as we entered the Park, we saw antelope, no big deal, we see these a lot on the way to Show Low! but these are practically tame!

 We were disappointed as we kept driving that we hadn't seen any buffalo, so a park ranger told us we could take any of the dirt roads and we would probably see some. We drove down the first dirt road we found and in the distance saw an opened jeep "tour" thing and followed it through a gate and sure enough--BUFFALO!  This big buffalo started after the jeep, and was butting the front of it. We stayed back and just watched. When they left, the driver told us we weren't supposed to be in there, I guess he had opened the gate and these buffalo were for "paying guests" only!! ($48 a person!!)

 The Ranger told us in the Fall they gather them and then auction some of them off, I guess that's why these were fenced up. The park generally sells 250-450 head of buffalo at the live auction which is held the 3rd Sat of November each year. Last year a mature bred cow sold for $2,542.86.  A 2-yr. old Grade bull- #2,300.

 Further along the main road, we saw all these buffalo.

 Its pretty cool to just see buffalo roaming the prairie!!

 This big guy was just along the side of the road. This was taken from the car window!! LaVerl could almost reach out his arm and touch him!!

 For lunch we stopped in the little town of Custer and ate. LaVerl had a buffalo burger!  He said it tasted just like regular hamburger.

 A cool old wagon at a Museum.

 So what is this?? Its hard to tell, but this is Crazy Horse! Its the worlds largest mountain carving, still in progress. It was began in 1948 and the 87ft. head of Crazy Horse was completed in 1998.

 In this picture you can see the drawing of the horses head. They still have tons of work to do!!

When finished, it will look like this --hopefully!!

 We stopped in Hill City where they have an 1880 steam train that goes to Keystone, SD and  back in 2 1/2 hours. Its pretty cool, but we missed the last train that day. 

We didn't do it all, but we saw and did lots!! It was a great trip!

Waiting for the plane -Heading Home!