After we left the Mammoth Site, we drove through the Black Hills. Along the road we saw some breath-taking scenery and a couple of our national monuments. Including Chief Crazy Horse.
 |
| Chief Crazy Horse National Monument |
This monument has been a work-in-not-so-much-progress for quite some time now. In fact, we were through the Black Hills two or three years ago and this monument hasn't changed much since then, if at all. So some day, in the very far off, distant future they might finish this Indian chief monument, but I wonder if it will be in my lifetime?
 |
| Rock Formation at Sylvan Lake |
Next we stopped at Sylvan Lake. My dad wanted to hike all the way around, but I still wasn't feeling very good, so my family went without me and I waited in the suffocating heat of the car for them to come back. Can't be positive, but we might've picked the hottest week of the year to do all of this. My sister took the camera and got lots of good shots so that I could look through them and feel like I'd gone along without all the physical exertion.
 |
| Temperamental Geese at Sylvan Lake |
While they were walking around the lake's perimeter they happened across a family of geese, including several young ones. There's four little ones in this picture. Mama goose didn't really care for our dog, and hissed at her quite ferociously. It worked to intimidate our dog, since she's never seen a goose before. Anyway, the only creature our dog would hurt would be a fly--or a spider--so the goose really had nothing at all to worry about.
 |
| Mount Rushmore |
Finally, the lake stop was over and we continued down the road. We took Needles Highway and went over the pigtail bridges and saw Mount Rushmore along the way. We've been there before a few times, so we didn't stop, only took pictures from a distance, and then we continued along the road until we reached Hill City.
 |
| Wooden Dragon Motorcycle |
In Hill City we saw this guy and just had to stop and take a picture. I'm not even sure what the name of this place was--we were all tired and hungry and didn't want to stop long to look around--but it was a stand with lots of cool wood carvings. In my opinion this dragon "motorcycle" wins the coolest contest hands down. And, yes, I am aware of what character this is, and from what show/movie, but to avoid copyright infringement, I won't mention names here.
 |
| Smaller Falls at Roughlock Falls |
With the afternoon sun dipping down in the sky, we stopped at Roughlock Falls for a quick walk and look around. This was the smaller part of the waterfall.
 |
| Larger Falls at Roughlock Falls |
And above was the big part. I took this picture from about even with the falls. I could've got a shot from below but...
 |
| Wooden Platform Far Below |
I would've had to walk all the way down to this platform and, more importantly, back up from it, and I wasn't feeling up to that at that time, so instead we just looked at how pretty the scenery was from nice, level ground on the trail above.
~SilverStar-Burst
Comments
Post a Comment