Day 22, The Hills Are Alive with Sound of Harleys

Today, we continued to drive east and entered the state of South Dakota. We are in the Black Hills, which actually strikes me as kind of a funny name since along the way from Wyoming to South Dakota much of the hills are red sandstone. We were told the Black Hills got their name because the pine trees that grow there appeared black in the sun from a distance.

We've gone from arid high desert plateau to green mountains. Our campsite at Custer State Park is wooded which is a nice change after the past few weeks where we were lucky to have a tree.

We made our way to Mount Rushmore. It had been on my bucket list when we decided to take this trip. It is truly a engineering marvel. We found out that only three of the people who worked on it were actually stone cutters. The rest were local miners. It was amazing to me that no one was killed while carving those large faces especially since 90% of the stone was removed by dynamite.

We are here during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. We had been warned against coming during the 10-day rally but this is the time that fit into our schedule, so here we are. Actually, we really haven't found all the motorcycles to be much of an issue. We've found it kind of interesting to see how all the local towns and attractions cater to the bikers. In this picture you'll see that the main street of this town is totally shut off to cars. Motorcycles are parked along the curb and down the middle of the street. I wondered how much of their annual revenue came in during these ten days.

We have no need to shop. We are fully provisioned and don't care to window shop so it's easy to keep our distance. Our campground is small and out of the way. We anticipate a quiet night.