A trip to the Black Hills would not be complete with a trip to Mount Rushmore. Big touristy places with lots of people are really not thing for us, but we felt like a visit to the national monument was required. As a big family we loaded up multiple vehicles and hit the road. We took another one of Custer State Park’s scenic drives, Iron Mountain Road (Highway 16A). This road has tunnels through the rock like the Needles Highway, but it also has the added feature of multiple “pigtail” bridges. These bridges loop around a full 360 degrees to not only make a turn in direction but, almost more importantly, a quick change in elevation. There were also multiple lookout spots along the way where we could see Mount Rushmore in the distance.
Once at the actual monument, it was already full of people by late morning. We snapped our pictures of the giant presidential faces carved in rock, visited the small museum, bought a patch (I like getting them from National Parks / Monuments, and then we were kind of done. Don’t get me wrong, we’re both glad we saw Mount Rushmore and got to learn about it’s history and carving. It’s a grand feat of human engineering and hard work. In all reality though, it’s really kind of a big nationally funded tourist trap. It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for some businessmen and politicians that wanted something to bring people (and money) to South Dakota. Anyway, I digress…
After Mount Rushmore, some of my family visited the still-in-progress Crazy Horse Monument. Instead, Dr. S and I just drove on past it (but still seeing a great - and free! - view of it from the highway) and visited the town of Custer. There wasn’t as much in Custer as we expected, so we didn’t stick around for too long. We poked in and out of a few shops but nothing was really grabbing us. Other family members went the following day and had a better time, so I think Custer just wasn’t for us. Additionally, after seeing all the people at Mount Rushmore I was surprised by the lack of people in Custer. It was a Tuesday, so there would be fewer tourists and it’s further of the interstate than Rushmore or Crazy Horse. But still, it was weirdly quiet.
We headed back to the lodge for a quick lunch and then hopped back into the car to drive Custer State Park’s Wildlife Loop. This is yet another one of the park’s scenic loops, but this one goes through large sections of prairie or other less rocky areas where the much of the park’s wildlife like to hang out. Fairly quickly we saw a few mule deer, but then not much else for a long time. We were starting to worry if we would see anything. It was a hot day and in the early afternoon, so we wondered if the animals would be far away from the road in some nice shady areas. Luckily, we came to a grove of trees where the park’s wild burros were hanging out. These donkeys are the descendants of the original donkeys that were used for treks up to Black Elk Peak. Essentially they were no longer needed and just set loose. The donkeys or burros are quite tame and apparently often go right up to cars begging for food.
After visiting the burros, we continued the loop and continued to see more wildlife. We next came across some pronghorn grazing and then sighted a herd of bison in a wooded meadow just off the road. A little further down we also spied some bachelor male bison taking dust baths to keep the flies at bay.
Heading back toward the lodge, the Wildlife Loop joins onto a more traveled highway, one which happens to go near another fire lookout tower. The Mt. Coolidge lookout tower is just a 1.75 mile drive up a gravel switchbacked road (without any guardrails). It’s another tower built by the CCC, but, unlike the Black Elk Peak tower, it is still an active lookout. You can’t go inside the tower but you can still go onto its lower viewing deck and take in the impressive views. From its vantage point, you can see Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Needles, and even the Badlands. We squinted through the slight haze to try to make things out, snapped some pictures, and then headed back to the lodge to end day 3.
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