June 30, 2012 ~~~ L-O-N-G roadtrip today!  Drove through Keystone, SD... almost like Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg... definitely a tourist TOWN! 

Took a drive through Custer State Park and Wildlife Management area and THAT is a beautiful place!  Lots of twisty turns, but also high in the forest.  We drove through several tunnels, all of which are situated so that when you look through the tunnel, you see Mt Rushmore framed by the tunnel and the trees.  My camera wouldn't take a clear photo through the tunnel with Mt Rushmore framed ... but I did take some through the trees at the END of one tunnel.   We are MILES away from Mt Rushmore, and partway up the side of a different mountain.

Single lane through every tunnel... have to honk as you enter to warn oncoming traffic!

You can barely tell that Mt Rushmore is framed in the trees at the end, but every tunnel is situated this way.  Pretty remarkable engineering.  Also, they "blasted" no rock to make this road, other than for tunnels, so no big "cuts" through the granite hillsides.  The road makes a lot of switchebacks and 360 degree curves to accomplish that!

This is a ZOOM from the end of that tunnel showing Mt Rushmore at the end framed by the trees, miles and miles away.

Here are a few other things we saw in Custer State Park.

This Big Daddy moseyed right beside our rig... his head is bigger than our whole side window!  There were hundreds and hundreds of buffalo on the move here, and this was the lead group crossing the road.  Was nice to see LOTS of baby buffalo with the group too.

After our great drive through the mountains of this park, we drove on south and east to Wounded Knee on the Oglalla Sioux reservation.  That too was a LONG drive.  Wounded Knee is not a prosperous town... very dry, dusty, and poor.  We stopped at a historical site and it was the actual place of the slaughter of the Sioux who were brought to that spot.  Across the road is a little family operated museum.  There isn't a lot in the museum, but what is there is very interesting, and the young man whose family owns it was very informative of the area, the two incidents that happened there, the exhibits, and the graveyard behind the museum.  The graveyard is the location of the "trench" grave where the bodies from the Wounded Knee masssacer were buried, and the monument.  "Buddy" Lamont is also buried there near the monument.  Buddy was a casualty of the 1973 incident and shootout with the FBI.  It is a very sad place.

A very sad place.