The Black Hills of South Dakota

We decided to drive the Iron Mountain Highway our first day in the Black Hills. It is a windy, narrow road with tunnels and lots of bridges. This is the first pigtail we went through. The road was built in 1919 and is really a beautiful drive.
This is a good picture of what the road does as it climbs the hill. There are lots of trees, but also areas where you can see out over the Black Hills that are really spectacular.
After going through this narrow, low and very long tunnel, we found out the tour buses go through here too! They only use experienced drivers and there isn't much room on each side of the bus. We were glad to have the car on this road.
This was the view that we got coming out of the second tunnel on our trip. It had a bit of the WOW factor. We went around a pigtail curve, crossed the bridge, went through the tunnel and got a really good shot. We went on this drive early in the morning so the sun was shining directly on Mount Rushmore.
After all the curves and tunnels we got on a bit of flatter land and saw a few pronghorns so we stopped to watch them. Then we noticed the fawn among the adults! What a treat, it scampered around for some time so we could take lots of pictures. When we told the rangers at the Custer State Park Visitor's Center that we had seen the fawn, they said we were extremely lucky because very few are ever seen and they had never seen one!
Burros in Custer State Park are not "wild" they are actually decedents of burros the minors brought to the area. They are wild now, but are very curious when you stop to watch them. This little guy was very hard to get a picture of, it was running around and mama kept trying to stay really close. They were really fun to watch.
We took a wrong turn on the Wildlife Loop Road through Custer State Park and coming around a curve we spotted this herd of buffalo. There were about 100 head in the herd so I couldn't get all of them in one picture. It was really quite a site!
As we got around closer to the herd, we spotted lots of babies. This one got really curious when we stopped to watch and allowed me to get a really closeup picture.
After all the shots of animals (we also saw a mountain goat and a turkey and we have lots more pictures of antelope and buffalo) my battery died in the camera! After a great morning driving and getting to see so much this was a bit anti-climatic, but it was neat to see again. They haven't gotten much done in the ten years since we saw it last though.
What can you say? Mount Rushmore is really awesome to see no matter how many times you've seen it! This is one of my favorite shots of the monument. We also visited the museum again and we got to have ice cream at the cafe (that's always a treat!)

Our last day in the Black Hills we got to go to a chuckwagon dinner at Ft. Hays Dances with Wolves. It was a good dinner and show and it was fun to see so many buildings from the set of Dances With Wolves. We also went through the Mount Rushmore Black Hills Jewelry Factory. That was a cool tour getting to see how Black Hills Gold is made. We had a really good visit to the Black Hills and are now looking forward to visiting Idaho!