Keystone, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is a great location to stay as it's close to all the popular tourist attractions - there is just so much to see and do.
We really enjoyed ‘Bear Country USA’ – a huge open wildlife park on 250 acres in the Black Hills. It is a 3 mile spectacular drive where we encountered lots of black bears, elks, reindeer, cougars, bobcats, rocky mountain goats, bighorn sheep, dall sheep and buffalo. We were under strict instructions not to leave our vehicle and to definitely leave the car windows up – I think they told us that the animals were not caged, so we had better stay in ours! It was very exciting as we have never been this close to wild bears and buffalo before and they were just wandering around crossing over in front of our car – absolutely amazing.
Also a highlight was Mount Rushmore. Mt Rushmore National Memorial is an enormous granite sculpture that represents the first 150 years of the history of the USA with 18m sculptures of the heads of former US presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The entire memorial covers 1278 acres and attracts approx 2 million people each year. We stayed there for over 5 hours taking in the evening lighting ceremony held in the new amphitheatre. (A $56 million redevelopment was completed in 1998 – including carparking, gift shops, museum, theatre, restaurant etc etc). The sculptures are amazing, especially at night when they are lit up.
Not far away is the development of another amazing mountain sculpture – Crazy Horse. This was my favourite – very inspiring. The monument has been in progress for over 50 years and is still far from completion and when finished will be the world’s largest sculpture. The original sculptor, Korczk Ziolkowski began the project in 1948 at the request of Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear and other Native American elders. Mr Z. died in 1982 and now his wife Ruth and 7 of their 10 children are continuing the project – all working at the actual site. It is totally reliant on the tourist dollar and is not government funded – something Mr Z insisted upon – he didn’t trust the government to continue funding and finish the project. We took a bus tour to the base of the mountain – it was enormous, so huge – far, far bigger than Mt Rushmore. Each year in June they have a special walk to the top of the monument – this year over 9,000 people walked the 6.2 mile walk. The hike’s turn-around point is on the outstretched arm directly in front of the carved face of Crazy Horse. Hikers get an up-close view of the mountain work that is blocking out the 22-story-high horse's head. We have put this walk on our ‘to do’ list and look forward to achieving this amazing walk one day.
We followed the steam train to Hill city and while there visited the “Mistletoe Ranch” a Christmas store where they celebrate Christmas every day – awesome! Back in Keystone we sat and relaxed on one of the side walk cafés and watched the multitude of bikers come and go. The town and the countryside is just wonderful and we imaged how beautiful it would be in winter with everything covered in snow – another thing added to our ‘to see’ list – at this rate we will have to take a whole year off just to cross things off the slate!
We also visited Custer State Park - absolutely spectacular. So many walking trails - so little time! We drove through a herd of wild buffalo and smiled as some of the bikers stopped and tried to decide whether or not to ride past these very large and intimiating animals - they ended up turning around and backing up until the buffalo had moved across the roadway. Very wise move! So many beautiful lakes and rock formations - another place to put on our neverending list of places to revisit when we have lots more time.
The following weekend we flew to Salt Lake City in Utah and then headed up to Yellowstone National Park – stay tuned for the next installment………….
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