Custer State Park - the essence of the Black Hills

Tammy, our GPS (so named because she lives in our Titan; hence, Tammy Titan), struggled a bit to understand where we wanted to go this morning, but in the end we made out fine with a couple of paper maps. Who knew you could do that?

Our objective was to see Custer State Park, which we eventually did, but not until we had seen some incredible scenery on Iron Mountain Road from Keystone, SD to the park.

 It's hard to see, but this is actually Mt. Rushmore as seen from Iron Mountain Road.

This is one of the overlook stops on the road.

We continued on this amazing roadway, which is very narrow and has some tunnels that are as little as 8'6" wide. That is a bit intimidating when you are driving a half-ton pickup. In addition, the highway has more twists and turns than a sack full of night crawlers. 

Here are some of the tunnels we negotiated.

Eventually, we arrived at Custer State Park.  The sign said we would have to pay $20 to continue through the park.  After a short discussion, we decided that we came to South Dakota to see the sights, and we would pay the price. We are so glad that we did.  This park is amazing.  The scenery is breathtaking, and the wildlife were lots of fun to see.  

There are lakes...

...and rock formations. 

No! Duh!

This guy was feeding right next to the road.

This herd of pronghorn antelope were also feeding near the road.

 And this "wild" donkey, will come right up to your car and demand a treat.

It would be hard to overstate how much we enjoyed this tour.  We agreed that Mt. Rushmore was great, but this park was even better. We would return here in a heartbeat.  We were, however, grateful that we were not pulling the trailer through those tunnels!