Mount Rushmore Roadtrip 2018

A visit to South Dakota to see the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was a trip full of interesting surprises. The road trip from Rapid City to get there was a great adventure in itself.

We began the day with a stop at the Crazy Horse Memorial.  This mountain carving began in 1948 and is still in progress now.  Its purpose is to honor the Indians of North America  and is funded only by admission fees and private donations.  

Our next stop on our scenic road trip was beautiful Sylvan Lake.  There was a trail around the lake for hiking and people fishing from its banks.  A great place for a picnic!

We continued our road trip on Needles Highway, a 14 mile adventure winding through granite spiked mountains and sometimes through one-way tunnels so tight you wondered if the car would fit.  It was a masterpiece of a road! 

The views were spectacular up close 

or in the distance.

Needles Highway led to the entrance of Custer State Park.  Here the 18 mile Wildlife Loop Road wandered through open grassland and pine speckled hills.  We quickly spied deer and turkeys, but the stars of the park were the buffalo.  They held up traffic while crossing the road to join other buffalo.
  

Often the they walked right by the car so it was easy to take up close pictures.

Just before leaving Custer State Park we came across a group of friendly donkeys.  Obviously some one has been feeding them because they were not shy at all.







A mother donkey and her young colt did keep their  distance out in the field with the prairie dogs. 




We continued our road trip to Mount Rushmore on the 18 mile Iron Mountain Road.  This road twisted and turned through the magnificent Black Hills scenery with pigtail bridges and tunnels that framed Mount Rushmore.  Another masterpiece of road design.

With every curve Mount Rushmore kept getting closer 

and closer.

until we reached our destination.

What a grand entrance both on the road and on the plaza with its towers of flags of the 50 states.

We could have reached Mount Rushmore more quickly if we had approached it by way of the city of Keystone.  But we would have missed out on a wonderful adventure.

Llamas in the Smoky Mountains 2018

On our visits to the Smoky Mountains we are always on the lookout for animals.  Bears, deer, turkeys, chipmunks.  I was very surprised to discover that three days a week there are llamas on the trails.


They begin their 13 mile roundtrip journey to bring supplies to the lodge at Mount Le Conte from the parking lot of the Trillium Gap trail on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  We got there at 6:00 and found the llama wrangler getting the 8 llamas out of their trailer and packing their bags.  She was very friendly and shared some of her adventures with the llamas.

The llamas were very calm and let us pet them and feed them alfalfa snacks.

After about 30 minutes, they were on their way.  Eager for their snack of pancakes when they reached the lodge!

Antelope Canyon April 2018

Page, Arizona offers some beautiful sights to explore by water and on land.  We began our visit with a boat tour on Lake Powell, a reservoir created on the Colorado River by the Glen Canyon Dam.

 Many visitors choose to explore the huge area in houseboats by winding through the canyons from the dam into Lake Powell.

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon on Navajo land east of Page.  A tour guide of the Navajo Nation escorted us through the canyon and helped us with capturing its beauty with photography.  The tour began with a impressive demonstration of a hoop dance that encouraged us to use our imagination interpreting the dance and sights of the canyon.

 


 We entered the canyon through what appeared to be a big crack in the rocks.

My camera immediately found unusual beauty which ever way I aimed it.

 With the help of our imagination the sunlight traveling through cracks in the canyon and the rock formations became pictures.

                                              a heart?
     

                                     Monument Valley?

                                                 a shark?

 a horse?

 An experience not to be forgotten.
 

Utah's National Parks-the Mighty 5

One week was really not enough to do justice to Utah's Mighty 5 National Parks in southern Utah.  But we saw lots of amazing things in our time there.  I took lots of pictures but none of them cause you to feel the hugeness of the scenery about us.  Majestic is a good word to describe it all.

We began our journey with Zion National Park on the west side of Utah.  Zion does not allow private vehicles into the park.  They provide a wonderful shuttle service with many stops along the six mile scenic drive.

The next park to visit was Bryce Canyon.  There were great sights to see on the way beginning with the one mile Zion-Mount Carmel tunnel.  At the end of the tunnel we found traffic had stopped for picture taking of a Desert Bighorn eating by the side of the road.

 There were more sights to see at every curve of the road.

There were completely different types of wonders to see at Bryce Canyon National Park.  The canyon filled with huge hoodoos was like being on different planet.

We had a light snow that morning which only added to the beauty.

The next day involved a lot of driving but a visit to Capital Reef National Park fell in the middle of the drive.  This park exceeded our expectations in all that had been created in this massive fold in the earth's crust called a Waterpocket Fold.

We continued our drive through central southern Utah to the town of Moab on the east side of the state.  This area contains Arches National Park and Canyonland National Park.

 
Arches was probably our favorite of the parks we visited.  It was so massive and contained the most unusual rock formations.

 

  

Arches National Park contains over 2,000 natural sand stone arches.  We didn't see them all but we did see a bunch!

 
We discovered that the Colorado River travels through Moab.  A quick trip along its banks led us to discover some rock climbers and even some pyroglyphics.

We did not make it to Canyonland National Park. It is a huge park and needed a whole day for just it. 

We drove through Monument Valley on our way to Arizona.  Monument Valley is not a national park.  It is part of Navajo land.  You will recognize the scene from the movie "Forest Gump".

Utah's Mighty 5 were pretty terrific!