Westward Vacation - Day 2

We woke up with a promise of a continental breakfast though technically it was a room with four tables and a counter with coffee, cereal and mini donuts. As much as i was dissapointed, it was quite good and did it's job.

The next 8 hours, my mom and dad and I spent in Custer State Park and in the Black Hills. Here's a list of all the things that we saw or did (roughly in order):

- While my dad got gas my mom and I went to this small little park off to the side of the gas station. It had busts of three presidents: Bush, Regan, and Kennedy. Apparently there is something called "The President's Park" which is a trail in the middle of the woods that is full of 44 busts of all the presidents. I wanted to go so that I would be able to get lots of pictures of said busts but NOOOO, it was TOOO far away. Hmph.

- I decided to start the liscence plate game (you know the one, where you have to find as many different liscence plates as you can) with myself. So I have been walking around taking pictured of people's liscence plates. Yes, I'm very creepy, thank you.

- Then my family and I went and visited Mount Rushmore. Honestly? I thought it was cool, but kinda stupid. I mean no disrespect to anyone who finds it amazing. But, it wasn't AMAZING. These people took 14 years to blow up the side of a mountain so that it would resemble the faces of some important people. Yes, it's an amazing feat, but I was mostly annoyed at the fact that Mount Rushmore was originally part of Native American land. Yes, all of America is part of Native American land. But this land was sarcred to the Indians. It was part of their religion and we blew up one of their sacred mountains so that we could have some faces on the side of a mountain. But i digress, it was kind of cool. Even though it involved a lot of walking.

- Once my family and I had finished our tour, we left and went to Custer State Park. We had a map that the guy (Jay) at our hotel had given us, telling us where to go and what to do. Custer State Park was actually one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. There were so many things there and overall it was just really well kept, and it was just plain beuatiful.

- In Custer, my mom had found a highway called "Needle's Highway" which turned out to be spectauclar. It was right on the edge of these mountains, and it was just breathtaking. There were parts where the road had to go through parts of mountains, so there were these tunnels. They were so narrow that they could only fit one car at a time, so when you were about to go in them you had to HONK your horn in order to let the people on the other side know that you were, in deed, going to drive through the ridiculously narrow tunnels. While driving in another part of Custer we saw a tour bus. Now, the thing that wondered about was how this TOUR BUS was going to fit into the tunnel. I have recently looked up the dimesions and have found that a typical tour bus is 8 feet across. One of the tunnels that we went through was 8 feet and 4 inches across. And that wasn't the narrowist one. We were very worried for the safety of these poor people.

- My family and i decide to have a picnic, so once we had gone through one of the tunnels (above), we pulled to the side and sat on the side of a mountain and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples and granola bars. The most amasing thing was the fact that after cars passed us, it was silent. And not city silent, but actual, dead silent.

- There was an outlook point that my dad and i found that was truly spectaular. There were views all around you and the view you got were amazing. It was breathtaking.

- At one point my parents and I pulled off to the side of the road and I took them off on a nonofficial trail. Actually, it wasn't a trail at all. But i paid attention to where I was going, and I only headed in one direction. Once i finally reached the highest point, we were a fair ways away from the car, but we were sourounded 360 degrees by mountains. It was sooooo cool.

- We saw a herd of buffalo which was also really cool. The noise they make is sort of like a tiger growling which was really creepy, but funny.

- There is this pact called the "Begging Burros" and it's a group of burros (donkeys) that walk on the road and stick thier head into your car asking to be petted and to be fed. I learned that I have a fear of burros. I'm totally fine with them being in someone else's car, but the second they start coming near my car i start to freak out. Of course, the other people wanted to know if i wanted to feed it (HELL NO) so they brought it over to me (thanks a lot). It was cool though to have these animals just walk up to your car. They were everywhere too, so it was hard to escape them.

- While my parents and I were heading out of the park, we found this place called "Elk's Haven and Horse Camp" which was a little convience store that was also horse camp (Bring your own horse!). So we went inside and bought some ice cream and sat outside on this huge wrap around porch and listened as people played checkers and told stories. It was great. And then we noticed a sign that said "For Sale". For about 20 minutes, we seriously considered how we could buy this place. It was beautiful. But we finally reasoned and realized that it would never be able to happen, so we piled back into the car and drove away.

For dinner we ate at the Firestation Brewery Co. which used to be a Firestation. It was really cool, but not as good as Tally's Silver Spoon!

See ya tomorrow!
<3 e