Spearfish-Badlands/Black Hills, South Dakota

From our hotel in Wall, Badlands National Park was just a short drive away. Beautiful geologic formations caused by severe erosion and bearing the colors of the rainbow rising out of the grassland. We certainly weren't the only tourists visiting the Badlands and it was fun to count the license plates of the other cars to see where everyone was coming from (maybe that's what happens after I spend two years as a "tourism geographer). I noticed that the majority seem to come from the more popular nearby states of the Midwest, such as Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, although they came from all over. There were even some other Californians.

From Badlands we drove west to the Black Hills. I was amazed that South Dakota, known for its prairie, was home to such beautiful, pine-treed, granite-filled mountains. The Black Hills also contain the highest point east of the Rockies...higher than anything in the Appalachians. Around the Mt. Rushmore area are tons of tourist traps piggybacking off the popularity of Mt. Rushmore. We didn't actually pay to go into Mt. Rushmore itself. Instead, we took a scenic highway up through the mountains and viewed the presdents' visages from an overlook several miles away. The scenic road, itself, was quite worth the drive. Narrow, winding, it went through multiple bridges and tunnels and at times divided into two separate, ribbon-like one-lane roads snaking through the thick pine forest. Furthermore, it worked its way through a fantastic, otherwordly landscape of granite formations resembling needles (hence the title "Needles Highway"). At one point, the road goes through a tunnel carved right through one of the needles. From there, we stopped at beautiful Lake Sylvan. Then north to the old mining towns of Lead and Deadwood, now big tourist attractions and gambling towns. Spent the night in the town of Spearfish, where a Corvette show was taking place with over 500 Corvettes! Ate dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant inside a beautiful 1890s sandstone building. The restaurant, filled with art and photography, a great big wine rack, and live jazz, could have easily been in California, but here it was in South Dakota.