Thursday, September 15, 2016

Bucket List Trip 2016~Day 9~ Hot Springs, SD to Devils Tower, WY to Belle Fourche, SD

 Today started off at about the same temp of 51°F and cloud cover as yesterday.
We took highway 385N from Hot Springs.


 First stop would be The Crazy Horse Memorial.
The closer we got, the more foggy it got.
 When we got to Crazy Horse, this is what we saw.
It was so foggy, they had marked the entrance price to 1/2 price @ $11 a car.
Thing is, we and a lot of others that turned around with us didn't want to pay to see fog.
Would you believe about 2 miles down the other side of the mountain, it looked like this?


 We approached the park from the west side.
We have been shocked our whole trip with how many tourists are traveling right now.
Turns out Mt. Rushmore was the worst and most crowded than Badlands.
As we came to the parking gate and waiting at the red light for our turn to get in line to pay 20 bucks for our car load,
I took the following shots from the car.
A time when I was thankful for my Nikon.
I was sitting on the other side of the car and took the shots through Mr. G's window.

 After seeing our shots and noticing the car line from the east wrapped around the curve,
we got in the other lane and moved on.
 As we descended down the mountain, Mr. G pulled over and asked a Ranger,
"When is the best time to come when the crowd is lighter?"
The guy shook his shoulders and said, "Now I have no idea.
We never have a crowd like this in mid week during off season."
This line was about a mile long and standing still.
OK, we checked that one off our bucket list and moved on.
Meanwhile, I'll revel in all the pictures that many of my friends and family took this past summer when they visited here.

Keystone, SD






Leaving Keystone











 By the time we had reached Wyoming,
The sky was beautiful and the temperature was a wonderful 73°!

























Supper in Belle Fourche, SD

Considering we'd had a light breakfast and pretzels for lunch, we were starved!
Mr. G cleaned his entire plate!

 Checked in for the night.
Worked about an hour on the pictures for this post.
A storm came through and out went the internet for about an hour.
So I'm trying to tell myself its not really midnight like at home, but it's really 10:14.
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mapquest isn't cooperating.
For further notes our travel today included:
Hot Springs, Pringle, Custer, Keystone, Hill City, Deadwood, Spearfish, Sundance, Devils Tower, Hulett, Aladdin, Belle Fourche

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Follow along on our trip as I will try to post daily.
Just use the "Newer" button below to find out what happened on Day 3.
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Thanks to the FREE program

 Photoscape for downsizing & watermarking photo & other alterations to pictures


2 comments:

  1. Nice photo series. Sorry that the fog ruined your view of Crazy Horse. I really enjoy going to Keystone. I am very surprised at how crowded Rushmore was and that it appears they have raised the cost of parking. I hope you enjoyed your trip.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great Pictures! Your Devil Tower climber shots are very good. I couldn't get close enough for good shots of them. :)

    ReplyDelete

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