Custer State Park (Needles Highway!) & Mammoth Site

 ......And the adventure continues!

The next morning after sleeping at a KOA campground in Rapid City, SD, we drove out early to explore Custer State Park. Ahead of our trip, I read that if there is any state park in the United States that deserves to have National Park status, it is Custer State Park! After our time there, we all agree!

Because animals are generally more active in the morning, we started our visit with the Wildlife Loop Road drive, which is a loop that takes about 50 minutes to drive. The name of the loop road definitely matches our experience - we saw antelope, bison, wild turkeys, and prairie dogs! My favorite was the antelope, which I learned is the fastest land animal in the United States, who knew?!? Brie's favorite by far was the prairie dogs, who actually do bark! Their bark is insanely cute, and they are all over the place. Everywhere you look are prairie dog holes with prairie dogs busy working!

Brie's other favorite thing was using her binoculars! Particularly when we would round a corner and she thought she saw bison in the distance, out came the binoculars to examine and let us know what it was! 

After leaving the Wildlife Loop Road, it was on to the world famous Instagram-worthy Needles Highway!! My pictures absolutely do not do this drive justice.

About halfway through Needles Highway, we stopped and did the Cathedral Spires Trail. It was so fantastic to be able to get out of the car and explore in the wonderful sunshine! The trail was pretty steep about halfway in, but it did not last long. Overall, I think we hiked 3 miles on it and saw spectacular views of the needles up closer. 

After the hike, it was back to the road for more amazing views! We loved having our windows rolled down and passing super close to the rocks, including at a couple of points through extremely narrow one-way tunnels!

About to go through a one-way tunnel! We went through two of these. The first one was not crowded. By the time we got to the second one though, there was a long line of cars on either side waiting to go through! They are one-way tunnels, and there is no stop lights or anyone directing traffic, so if you don't time it right, you could really end up waiting an extremely long time to get through it! eek!

After the Needles Highway, we did something we had done many times so far on our road trip - find a place to stop for lunch and eat out of our cooler on the back of our car! Many sandwiches this trip :) Because we were at the park on Labor Day, it took us over half an hour to find a good parking spot next to the picnic area at Sylvan Lake. But we were finally successful and the weather was just perfect!

There are three main trails starting at the Sylvan Lake area - Sunday Gulch trail, Sylvan Lake shore trail, and Black Elk Peak. Due to time and trying to preserve our energy for Grand Tetons/Yellowstone, we chose to do the easiest but still scenic one - Sylvan Lake shore trail. But just google the other two, and you will see why they are DEFINITELY on our "to-do" list for the next visit someday!

Sylvan Lake is absolutely gorgeous though and provided so many photo opportunities.

(for the above picture - you can see Aaron at the top of the rock! He chose to try to go the hard way on the trail :))

After our shore trail walk, it was time for Brie to try swimming in the lake! Although it was in the 80's that day, the water was cold from low temperatures at night AND the air is dry with little humidity....meaning that Brie did not last very long in the water haha! But as she was very proud to tell me - she went under water "seven times"! 

The next stop on our trip was the Mammoth Site, which is something I had not planned at all but happened to see it on the map and needed to kill some time before dinner and driving through the night to get to Grand Tetons the next day. But it actually turned out to be super cool! The Mammoth Site is the world's largest mammoth research facility where you can tour an active paleontological dig site! It was really neat to walk around and see everything being dug. The dig site was discovered all the way back in the mid-1970's, and has been continuously explored since then, which is pretty incredible!

(You can see footprints of mammoths in the cut-away sandstone!)

Our last stop was not actually a stop unfortunately, as Wind Cave National Park's actual cave is not open due to COVID-19 :( However, we did get to drive through the gorgeous prairie and hills, and Brie still was able to get the junior ranger badge, so not all was lost :) Hoping one day to go back and tour the cave!

 

We ended our day eating for one last time in Rapid City SD (love that place!!), and then it was on the road for a very scary drive-through-the-night experience to Grand Tetons National Park! I say very scary because the amount of deer on and next to the road as we drove in pitch black dark was absolutely terrifying. We must have passed at least 200 deer in the span of a few hours. I was relieved to make it to Grand Tetons the next day! Stay tuned....