August 9th
Packed lunches, made breakfast/coffee, dishes, cat litter, ready to go.
Headed to Mount Rushmore. $10 parking ticket and it's good for an entire year. Huge parking garage, lots of bikers, they got in for free. Maybe Sturgis has something set up with all the parks for them during this time. Pretty cool lol. It was busy but I think it get busier on the weekends. We did the Presidents Trail. Not too long and it's in the shade, pretty views, and multiple views of the Presidents. I think it was very pretty and I love the walkway going up to them. All of the states and their flags. There was a nice big gift shop. Lots of good stuff here. Line moved fast, lots of people working. Black Hills National Forest is also right here. We wanted to do a trail and found one that was 8 minutes away. We made a wrong turn and it ended up adding another 25 minutes on to the drive. Which was fine because we got to see lots of the forest. Really pretty rock formations and lots of turnouts to see everything.
The GPS ended up just taking us a long way to turn us around and go back the way we came lol. We got to the campground where the GPS said the trailhead was. The camp host was at lunch so no one was there to ask questions. We ate our lunch and waited. Decided to just go do something else. Went back the original way we went and stopped at a trail head that is the centennial trail. We did some of this and saw lots of butterflies and wildflowers. So much granite and glitter everywhere. The rocks here are amazing. You don't want to stop looking at the ground lol.
We also stopped at Horsethief Lake and sat by the water. There was some sort of hawk that was looking for fish to catch. The fish jump out of the water very often here. We watched him dive 3-4 times and he never caught a fish. But his dives were really neat to watch. Later on another bird came by and attacked him! He dodged it and kept going. The bird came back around and flipped him in the air and they went somewhere else. I totally see why people birdwatch now lol.
We got back to the trailer and ate something. We were going to check out the picturesque Angostura Reservoir which is super close to the campground. $8 charge though and we already did our two paid parks. So we went to check out Wind Cave National Park. Got another stamp in our passport book! Went to see the natural entrance and what they got their name for. There were National Park scrapbook stuff here too. Got some of that. The caves are closed because they need to work on the elevators. Which was fine because I just wanted to see the park. We saw more wildlife here in the few hours we were there than our whole month in Wyoming lol. Prairie Dog Towns are everywhere! They're so goofy and they talk amongst themselves all day. We saw lots of bison and even got to be on the road with one. We saw lots of pronghorns too. With babies! We did a trail that went up to the fire watch tower. The scenery was beautiful. I also watched a prairie dog eat a flower. It was so cute lol. The sunset was pretty along the plains. Super glad we went!
Got back and made dinner. Showered. Watched a Black Mirror episode and planned Badlands for tomorrow.
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