This was a beautiful drive particularly for someone who had not taken these roads before!
It all started with a road construction backup right outside of Custer. We had to travel on “dirt” hard pack road for a few miles. Once we got by those conditions, the rest of the trip was uneventful.
We arrived at our KOA campground just close to Custer, SD. This was centrally located for all the various excursions around and in Custer State Park.
Our first full day, our first stop was visiting Crazy Horse Memorial. This was built and operated by a privately funded non-profit organization. The history, cooperation and involvement of the Indians and sculptor’s family was highlighted in the nicely done exhibits.
Our next stop was our visit to Mount Rushmore. Fred had visited this with his family in the early 50’s. He remembers dirt roads and the famous faces of Mount Rushmore. Much has changed around these faces. New were the museum exhibits, the beautiful entry walk ways and walks as well as the parking garages. All the enhancements greatly added to the impressive Faces of Mount Rushmore.
The roads in the Black Hills leading to and way from Mount Rushmore were almost as impressive. The were narrow winding roads with impressive views of the hills and occasionally a slightly different view of the Faces. There were two tunnels that we went though as we were to exit the second tunnel we saw that the tunnel exit perfectly framed the Mount Rushmore Faces.
Early on the morning of the 2nd full day in Custer, SD, we headed to kayak on Stockade Lake not realizing the history lesson we were about to get. Stockade Lake was formed by damming the local streams. It seems that this was the place where the Black Hills Gold Rush started. The gold had been found in these streams. At one end of the lake there was a Stockade fence protecting about 8 or so cabins inside its borders. It seems that a prospector’s group violated the terms of the treaty with the Indians by occupying this land. They built this secret compound to protect themselves while they hunted for gold.
We were able to kayak almost up to the front entrance of this compound since the water was running high.
The area around and In Custer State Park was very beautiful and serene. We tried to extend our stay an extra day but our site had been reserved for that date.
We didn’t see as many animals as we expected. We met people who told us this was unusual.
It appears that we didn’t taken any pictures on the trip from Silverthorne, CO through Denver area. The picures we took started with the prairies north of Denver to the Custer area.
