Sabbatical Roadtrip Day 9

We woke up with a plan of seeing National Jewell Cave Monument, Crazy Horse Monument, Mt Rushmore, The Reptile Gardens, Thunder Mountain Gold Rush Museum, Bear Country USA and if we had time and energy the Wind Cave Monument. Ambitious, I know. We made it to the Jewell Cave Monument by 10am but the next available tour wasn't until 12:30, so we hung around to complete our Jr. Ranger badges before going into a freezing cold tunnel underground. The tour was fascinating! But leaving the caves at 2pm required some rearranging of our already busy schedule. We saw an incredible amount of motorcycles this week. The craziest one had antlers and a stuffed racoon on the back! We did a quick drive by Crazy Horse Monument and off to Mt. Rushmore which was fun to see and has changed so much in 30 years (the tourist part, not the actual carvings on the mountain!). On our way out from Mt. Rushmore Jasper told us of this amazing Needles place we should visit, so we scrapped the aggressive itinerary we had left and drove towards the Needles Hwy. We wandered on one lane road winding round and round till we came to Custer State park. At this point I began to doubt the recollection of the 14 yr old in the car but we pressed on. We meandered again through the woods as we started to realize daylight would be leaving us soon. Just as I was totally unsure of this quest and figured we should abandon it, we came around the corner to see the amazing Needles Rocks that were recommended. After enjoying the incredible views we continued to our hotel for some rest.