The Black Hills of South Dakota

This past summer I was fortunate enough to spend a day in the Black Hills of South Dakota. While this wasn't nearly enough time to see everything, I was still able to take in some great views.

The last time I was in the area was to see Mt. Rushmore as a pre-teen, so it's been quite a while. My friends and I decided to head out there because one of us hadn't taken this common road trip from Minnesota as a kid. When he finally saw Mt. Rushmore, he made sure to text his mom!

Waking up in Rapid City (yes, we stopped at Wall Drug the previous day), we quickly made our way towards Mt. Rushmore. When we finally got to the park, we didn't really want to pay, so we continued to drive around.

We ended up finding a winding road with some bridges and tunnels that continued to climb up the hill. It was exciting as we looked through one of the tunnels, you could see Mt. Rushmore in the distance. We hiked around a bit and took plenty of pictures. It was much more scenic than I remember as a kid. I think all of us would have loved to spend more time there, but we had to make our way to Colorado for the rest of our trip (see post: Hiking to Conundrum Hot Springs). I know I'll go back there sometime, and will probably blog about it then as well.