Month: September 2023

On Wednesday we headed back out for more sightseeing. Although we never did see much rain on Tuesday, it was a good day to get caught up on laundry and cooking. Unfortunately, we woke Wednesday to some smoke in the horizon from the forest fires up north.

We headed up the Needles Highway for some spectacular views. With a number of narrow tunnels (just over 8’ wide) as well as a few one lane bridges, it also has lots of hairpin turns! It was good that the tourist season is starting to slow down so the number of vehicles was certainly less than there would have been a month ago.

Our next stop was Mt. Rushmore. Here we stopped to see the 6 story high carving on the mountain face of 4 presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln.

We also stopped at Sylvan Lake which reminded us of the landscape found in Northern Ontario and the Canadian Shield.

Our trip out on Thursday was much shorter as we were checking out a location for camping next week. In this area of South Dakota, many of the National Forest campgrounds start to close down for the season on September 11th and those that do stay open, have water turned off and possibly only one loop open. we did find a location we think will work and will allow us to drive one last loop of the Black Hills.

Friday was a move day for us – over near the Badlands National Park. I’ll leave you with a teaser picture – here is our campsite for the next couple of nights – ours is the first trailer from the left! Tomorrow we hope to drive the loop road in Badlands.

Goodnight!

On Thursday we left the Tetons and started to head east. We changed our plans for our campsites for the next week due to the heat that was forecast. With the highs supposed to be over 30 degrees C, we were concerned it might be too challenging to sleep, since our campgrounds looked like there was no shade and no electric hookups. We headed to a town called Thermopolis in Wyoming where there are hot springs. The last hour of our drive was through the Wind Canyon and was spectacular!

We had an early supper when we arrived at our campground and headed to the hot springs and spent the next couple of hours there. They had both indoor and outdoor pools but they kept the temperatures around 35-37 degrees C. They did however, have a hot tub outside that was kept at a nice 39 degrees C.

We spent 2 nights there before moving on towards South Dakota. We made a stopover on Saturday night in a city park in Douglas where we had stopped on our way to Yellowstone. It was a nice quiet place along the river with only a few other campers for the night.

On Sunday we arrived in South Dakota where we are staying for 5 nights. Once again we have reserved an electric site since most of the time we are expecting temperatures around 30 degrees C. It’s a small campground that had one last site available for Sunday night but by Monday there were lots of sites empty.

Today we decided to go for a drive to the north. There is a large area in this corner of South Dakota called the Black Hills which has a lot of tourism and national parks to explore. We drove through Wind Cave National Park but the cave there is closed this month for some maintenance work. From there we went into Custer State Park and drove the loop road. There were lots of bison there – unfortunately we are too early for their bison roundup which occurs the end of September. It is a real event to see apparently.

We also saw a group of burros on the road. Years ago the burros were used for pack animals for travelling through the area. When they were no longer used, they were released into the wild to roam. However, they have become beggars since people feed them! It causes quite the traffic tie up at this location, where they tend to stay, since there is a stream for water and a grove of trees for shade.

We headed back to our campsite mid afternoon since there was some possibility of thunderstorms and the weather changed from our clear blue skies and 33 degrees C to dark clouds and 17 degrees C. We may wait until Wednesday to resume our sightseeing since there is a cold front and cloudy weather forecast for tomorrow.