Black Hills SD Tour Today

Today was a long day!  We were up at 6:30 am and at Fort Hays where the tour starts by a little before 8 am.  Fort Hays is a tourist area sort of place that boasts having the set from the movie Dances with Wolves.  Actually the movie was made about 100 miles from here and they moved the set to this location in 1993.  Even though is was touristy, we liked it.

The tour includes all you can eat breakfast and a 9 hour tour of the Black Hills.  The tour included the following items:

• Mount Rushmore
• Iron Mountain Road
• Custer State Park
• State Game Lodge
• Needles Highway 
• Sylvan Lake 
• Crazy Horse Mountain and Memorial
• Fort Hays Chuckwagon Supper & Cowboy Music Show

We originally found out about this tour from Howard and Linda Payne's BLOG RV-Dreams Journal .  They were here a couple of weeks ago.  This couple has helped so many people follow their dreams in to the RV living life.  Thanks Howard and Linda!

Fort Hayes HQ.  Get tickets here.

Our Tour bus.

Part of the movie set from Dances with Wolves

Wooden Indian

Mount Rushmore with the flags from all states and territories

Close up

Good picture of us!

Interesting view that the bus driver says he doesn't always stop for.  

We were good so he stopped :)

Needles Highway view

This tunnel is only 100 inches wide and the bus is 96 inches! 

This is when we were coming out.  People at the other end were filming us coming through.

When we went by them, everyone applauded!

Sylvan Lake.  Just a picturesque lake in the mountains.

We were amazed by the Crazy Horse mountain sculpture.  They have been working on this for the past 64 years!  Their is no government money in this, they do not want it.  The sculpture was asked for by the Lakota Indian elders which Crazy Horse was a part of.  The sculpture is the work of two generations of the same family.  It is the largest sculpture in the world.

Crazy Horse mountain sculpture.  Foreground is the 1/34 model.  

The actual is 1 mile away in the background.

Crazy Horse close up.

The show after dinner.

We got back to our room by 9 pm, a long day indeed!  We didn't have cell reception all day and we were trying to keep up with the closing of the house and the final walk through.  We were a little bummed that the closing did not happen again :(  Seems the bank still needed an other document that no one was aware of.  On a good note, the walk through went off with out any issues.

Tomorrow we fly back to NJ.  We plan to relax on the beach on Friday.

Stay tuned.