A month ago, now, my sister and I were traveling to South Dakota. I even showed you a couple of night shots that we took and told you I’d share more.
And then life just kept going and it got harder and harder to go back and finish editing the South Dakota images. Luckily I was able to spend a lot of time in the evenings during my stay in Alabama working on them.
I probably told you the biggest reason we were traveling way out to SD was because my friend from high school lives in a place with very dark skies.
And there’s nothing like dark skies to fully appreciate the sky and especially the Milky Way. So we chose a few days during the darkest part of the month to sit under her skies and stare at all the stars.
But we did other things too, the things that most people do when they’re in Southwest South Dakota. Like visit Crazy Horse.
We saw the Crazy Horse mountain sculpture back in the late 60s or early70s when I was a kid. My family was traveling west in our pickup camper and we stopped here. Back then there was just the hole under the Indian’s arm.
And if I remember right, we spoke with the sculpture in his little house where he had a front room set up as something of a shop. I could be wrong in that memory but I remember being in a small room with a low ceiling talking to a man with a beard about the project. It was just a hole in the mountain then and it seemed so unlikely that we’d see an Indian some day.
Now that home is part of a bigger structure that is part museum, part gift shop, part restaurant. We ate lunch there. I had something they called a taco, made from Indian fry bread and topped with a bunch of stuff.
After Crazy Horse we went to Mount Rushmore. Again, we were there when we were kids. Back then there was no welcome center or museum. I remember parking and walking to a view point pretty much directly under the sculpture.
Now there’s a big walkway with flags from different states leading to a viewing area.
But, if you want, you can take a trail walk and get the old, closer, view.
It was close to 100 degrees the day my sister and I visited but of course we had to do the trail! Even with the warning about the 425 stairs we would encounter along the way!
Even in the heat it was a lot of fun.
The next day we went to Custer State Park. I don’t remember if our family visited the park back in the day. We probably did, but I have no specific memories.
The first cool thing we saw inside the park were the buffalo. There were lots of them, on both sides of the two lane, two way, road. We stopped behind a slow moving line of cars and shot images from our open windows.
There was a group of motorcycles behind us and I kind of wondered how folks on the bikes were feeling having little to nothing between them and the big animals.
But no animals and no people did anything stupid.
After we did the Wildlife Loop we drove the Needle road, also in Custer State Park, which winds (and I mean winds!) among tall, thin spears of rocks.
It is also a narrow, two lane, two way road. There was no stripe on the road as there wasn’t enough room. It snaked around the rocks, often with drop offs and no guard rails.
It was typical of many roads in the West, but scary for both me as driver and my sister as passenger.
There was also a place where the road went through the rock. You couldn’t see to the other side and it was one lane (8 feet) wide. So I didn’t know how you knew when it was your turn to go. I sure wouldn’t want to meet a car in the middle. Which car or truck would back out?
Luckily we made it, though I don’t think it really was my turn. I just followed the car in front of me and went. We also saw a big motor home on the winding road and apparently it fit through too because we never saw it again. My friend who lives out there said tour buses go through the tunnel so I guess it isn’t as tight as it felt. But honestly? I think the Needle road needs to be one way…and there needs to be a red light/green light system for going through the tunnel!
On our last night we took our hosts out to dinner in Wyoming! It was only a few miles away and so we get to say we visited another state!
On our way home the next day we drove through the Badlands. What a beautiful place that is! Even though it was still very hot and we didn’t stay outside the car for very long at any overlook.
I think there are several spots close to the road, in parking lots and viewpoints, that would work for Milky Way photography.
We had a really lovely time out there. I’m hoping to go back again someday, maybe earlier in the Milky Way season when there’s a chance of doing a pano of the whole arch of the Milky Way. Of course I’d have to learn to do a pano first.
Change Is Hard 