Day Eight - Mt. Rushmore

Today was our last day in South Dakota, with three great destinations: Mount Rushmore, Needle Highway, and Crazy Horse Memorial. Temperatures were much warmer than yesterday morning but still brisk at around 65F. We left the Inn at 7:30am and made our routine stop at the Battle Mountain Bistro. With breakfast consumed, we headed out of Hot Springs to catch SD 79 north towards Hermosa.

At Hermosa, we turned left onto 40 West (a new road for us this trip) that weaved around the foot hills to the Black Hills providing us quick glimpses of Mount Rushmore as well as nice log cabin homes and horses in the many-acre yards.

Route 40 dropped us into Keystone. We hung a left onto route 244 which took us right into Mount Rushmore within five minutes. We spent three hours with the presidents. We were surprised at how much there was to do at the memorial.

The entrance to the Memorial is terraced with flags of all the states on large granite columns. This provides quite the spectacular view and really frames the presidents. Julie and Tom met a couple from the Ride for Kids organization who gave us tips on the rough roads and construction traffic between Grand Tetons and Yellowstone that we will be visiting later in the week.

We walked through the exhibit area then had lunch at the café, which was quite tasty. Rob and Michele walked the “President’s Trail” that was about .70 miles long. The trail provided several different perspectives from which to view the presidents (like up their noses!). The trail ended at Gutzon Borglum’s Studio. Here we could see the 1/12 model Borglum used to create Mt. Rushmore using the ancient “pointing” system. Borglum changed the model nine times during the creation of Mt. Rushmore to adjust to the sun angle, rock fissures, and other issues that he encountered while carving the mountain.

With our visit with the presidents over we headed back to the bikes, suited up and headed out for a ride on 16 Alternate across Iron Mountain. While we had driven on this road on our first day in South Dakota, today we were riding it in the opposite direction.

After descending Iron Mountain, route 16A then meanders its way through Custer Park where we picked up SD 87, the Needle Highway. The Needle Highway started off with us winding among the tall pine trees. The road got progressively twisty doubling back on itself on several occasions with 5mph hairpin turns! The GPS map looked like intestines.

The road was absolutely jammed with motorcycles. Michele commented that it was as if we were on a gigantic group ride, and Tom said “No, more like gi-normous!”

As the road rose higher into the Black Hills the tall pine trees gave way to spires of granite.

 The road tunneled through some of these rock formations.

One of the tunnels is called the eye of the needle. This tunnel was only 10’ wide by 10’ high and it truly felt like you were threading a needle riding into it. Very cool!!

The Needle Highway ended at SD 16. We took 16 South a few miles to the Crazy Horse Memorial. This memorial construction project is quite the endeavor. In fact it has been going on for a little over 60 years, all privately funded and constructed by a single, very dedicated family. The memorial is massive at over 560 feet high.

 Unlike Mt. Rushmore, this memorial of Crazy Horse riding his horse will be done in three dimensions in the round, with the entire mountain sculpted into the famous war chief.

After our visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial we continued south on SD 16 and then onto 87 South through Custer State Park and then into Wind Cave National Park. We again saw more “Totonka”, antelope, donkeys, and prairie dogs. You can always tell you’re near the Buffalo trails as they mine the road pretty heavily ;-)

We returned to Hot Springs, ate dinner and ended our day for the last time at the Sojouner Inn. Although today was a light riding day with only 160 miles put on the bikes it was not short on scenery. South Dakota has exceeded our expectations in both scenery, roads and perfect weather conditions. What a spectacular place to vacation on a motorcycle. I have a strong feeling we will likely return someday.

At day’s end, Tom and Rob “reconfigured” the bikes into “travel mode” by attaching the hitch racks and repacked our items in our bags for our early morning departure tomorrow. We ride for west tomorrow entirely across Wyoming and into Yellowstone National Park. The ride promises to be beautiful as we cruise across the Bighorn Mountains, the Bighorn Canyon, and across the Absaroka Range from Cody to Yellowstone. We hope to continue our daily posts while in Yellowstone but with limited Internet access in the park, that might not be possible. If not, we’ll get all caught up on the 10th of August when we are in Forsyth, Montana on the beginning of our journey back home.

Love and hugs out to our family and friends back home!