South Dakota

Within the Black Hills of South Dakota and in the area of Mt. Rushmore are two scenic byways: The Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Highway. They are beautiful drives surrounding you with incredible rock formations . The next several pictures were taken on those drives.

Many of the rock formations along the way are given names. This one on the Needles Highway, obviously, is called the Needle's Eye.

The annual Sturgis bike rally is by no means contained to Sturgis, South Dakota. Bikers can be seen and mostly heard in every town and highway within a 100-mile radius. This scene, and the one to the right, was taken in Hill City.

The Badlands of South Dakota is an awesome drive, just off of I-90 near Wall. More pictures of "The Bad Lands" can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

Crazy Horse Memorial has been a work in progress since 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski . He died in 1982, but his wife Ruth and several of their children have taken over the efforts of seeing that the project continues. There is no planned completion date.

When we learned there would be a blasting at the memorial the next day, my friend and I decided to extend our trip in the area to watch it. We were parked and had our camping chairs in the parking lot by 3, ready for the 4pm blasting. And then it happened: Poof. When it was all over, everyone was asking, "Was that it????" In the photo on the right, you may be able to see the finished result compared to an above photo: one horizontal layer of rock at the very base of the finished section was blown away.

Put your index finger horizontally across your screen just above the tree line. The top of your finger will just be covering the section of rock that was removed in the blasting.

The pictures of wildlife in the following photos were taken at Bear Country USA just south of Rapid City, SD. Bear Country USA is a natural habitat drive-your-car-through park. In any and every situation, the animals have the right of way.