Day 3 Deadwood, SD to Longmont, CO

By Boomer n Shannon - October 10, 2014

Day 3 - Oct 10, 2014 Deadwood, SD to Longmont, CO

468 miles, 5 National Parks and 3 states

South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado

I've got a story for ya... Back when I was 12 years old. My parents used to take our family of 5 on road trips out west or another destination of their choice every 2-3 years. That particular year, we were in the South Dakota/Wyoming area. I was flipping through the AAA travel guide (remember those...big fat book with all campgrounds listed in them?!?) So, it was my turn to pick a place to stay for the night and I found this great sounding place - They have a swimming pool AND we can pan for gold...all for $6 for the night. I was sold and told my dad how to get there. When we arrived, yes there was a swimming pool (round 3' above ground pool - I will look for the picture)...and they were fresh out of gold so we were not able to pan for gold. The story goes that my family has teased me for picking that "fabulous" run down campground for about 25 years. Since we were going to be in the area, I thought I'd stop by and reminisce. Turns out, the place is "STILL" in great shape and they got a bigger pool. Being October, it was closed but we could still drive through.

In Shannon's defense, this was a pretty nice campground!

Ahhh, Mount Rushmore. Here is a place that goes against everything I believe in about National Park preservation. Park system was put in place to preserve natural treasures, resources, etc, and here we have a huge man made sculpture in our park system. Not really a fan of the millions they have spent to showcase this sculpture, as amazing that it actually is.

Oh, and they won't honor our inter-agency annual pass... Boooo! They say the $30 parking fee is a concession fee, NOT an entrance fee like most parks have. Again I say BOOOO... There is no other way in other than to pay for parking... Oh well, I've never been here, and now I have. Glad I finally made it!

Took up a visit with they gents!

If you haven't seen this, it is in the sculptor's studio. This is what it was supposed to look like. They ran into some issues with the intricacies so opted to do more of a bust than half body.

Had fun watching him and all his friends on the prairie.

Caves are nice, but we often pass on the guided tours because the tours times are usually not aligned well with our time frame. I don't want to say once you've seen one, but they are very similar and we've done several cave tours.. While I doubt we would come back to Wind and Jewel, if we did, I'm sure we would take the time to get the tour.

Had to check out ol' Flintstone's Drive Inn between Cave visits. Stayed here when I was probably 8?

While wind and Jewel entrances are 40 miles or so apart, they say that there is a chance they may be connected. I doubt that I will ever traverse from one to the other without the assistance of a motorized vehicle... lol

These are the scenes that dreams are made of!

Hot Springs, SD had a lot to offer as we passed through. Shannon decided that maybe she should become sheriff, and we stopped by this really nice waterfall. I wanted to hang around and get some BBQ, but it was closed. Shannon dropped her bid for sheriff, but the memories are a keeper!

I would vote for her, she would probably make the best sheriff.

While cruising down the road, Shannon informed me that we could possibly make Scott's Bluff before they closed at 5 pm if we didn't take much time at Agate (Which was the next park). I asked he how far it was and was informed it was only like 210 miles and it was like 1:30pm. Needless to say, we had to make some serious time to pull off the addition of the extra park. As you can see, these roads are pretty well suited to making some serious tracks should one need to.

If you ever wondered what it looked like to drive through Nebraska...it's your lucky day!

Scott's Bluff was really important to the early western settlers as a landmark in know which direction they were going on any number of the westward bound trails. Also, Shannon took a close-up of Chimney Rock which is also a monument that is also protected under the Department of the Interior like all other parks, but is managed privately, so it doesn't have a national passport stamp. For this reason, we will nix the 50+ mile roundtrip trek to visit it and settle with the beautiful zoom job by Shannon.

This is a zoom in on Chimney Rock from the top of Scott's Bluff. - it is 25 miles away as the bird flies.

We were really happy that we pushed hard to add Scott's Bluff into our schedule. While we didn't get to spend much time with the fossils, we figured they would be fine to wait. After all, they've waited millions of years to be seen anyway.