The weather was overcast with an occasional sprinkle of rain. We headed further east on a 2 lane, winding road that entered into Bighorn National Forest. We stopped at the Shell Falls wayside for a quick potty break and ended up checking the sights out.
"Take a picture of us touching this rock"
The road we were travelling on
Another waterfall!
The scenery through the Bighorns is gorgeous. There are craggy mountains, valleys with rolling hills, stunning views across the plains. We saw some mule deer and a moose on our drive but didn't get a chance to stop and take pictures. After all, on winding mountain roads there isn't much of a shoulder. If you're driving out that way, I highly recommend taking the Cloud Peak Skyway.
Malone wanted us to find the end of the rainbow
Sheep!
Looking back towards Cloud Peak
We stopped for the night in Buffalo, WY. The next morning it was onwards to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore. Driving towards our intended stop, I remembered a friend (Cindy) mentioning an animal park that you could drive through that she had visited while in SD. I looked in the travel guides I had for the area and found the park...Bear Country.
Reindeer
Arctic Wolf
Bighorn Sheep
Hello Mr. Black Bear
"Don't these tourists have something better to do?"
At first the experience was kind of neat. When we stopped by the arctic wolf, he sat up and started howling and 2 more wolves came up over a hill. Our first sight of the black bears was great. Here we were having a chance to see them mere feet away from us, with no worries about injury as long as we stayed in the car with our windows up. The kids were fascinated. However, as we drove further in, it became sad. All of the animals looked miserable in the heat and most were panting. The amount of black bears they had (we counted over 50 in one little area) was excessive. It went from, "Oh look! A bear!" to "Huh, look. Another bear.". I'm not an animal activist by any means but the conditions the animals were in was depressing. It was much better being in Yellowstone and seeing animals in their natural habitat.
We only did the driving part of Bear Country and headed back on the road towards Mt. Rushmore.
Heading up the road, the minivan started making a funny noise. We pulled to the shoulder and I opened my door to look...
Curses!
We had a flat tire. Out came the minivan manual so we could find out where the jack/spare tire/etc. were located. Luckily, Papa was with us which meant that changing the tire wasn't a big deal. An inconvenience, yes, but not a disaster.
Seconds before he gave me a one finger salute for taking pictures while he changed the tire
I admit, I found the whole incident kind of funny. I'm surprised something like this didn't happen sooner. We used the GPS to find a Firestone and drove back into Rapid City to get a replacement tire. With all said and done, it took probably 2 hours out of our day to deal with the tire situation.
As we headed back towards Mt. Rushmore the weather started to deteriorate. Storm clouds were rolling in and it was starting to sprinkle again. We pulled into the parking lot to the sound of thunder. Did we decide to not see Mount Rushmore? Heck no. After all, Kakes wanting to see it was the push for our entire trip. We headed the opposite direction (towards the monument) from all the other tourists and took a few quick pictures.
Blue sky quickly disappearing
After the tire incident, we were running behind, so we weren't able to see the film about Mount Rushmore. We spent maybe 7 minutes there and then jumped back into the minivan and headed back out to try and make up some of our lost time.
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