Road Trip Day 4

June 14th we left Deadwood, South Dakota and headed for Cody, Wyoming. If you are in the Deadwood area there is a must see scenic drive you should take. The highway through Spearfish Canyon is amazing. I probably would not have taken this side trip out of Deadwood, but a friend who used to live there told me about it. Amazing deep canyon with to die for scenery. Then it was on to I90 and heading west . You leave South Dakota and enter Wyoming in a short distance. But before I leave South Dakota I want to say what a great vacation destination South Dakota is. I wished I could have spent an entire summer exploring all the great attractions across the state. I will be going back. If you are planning to go, send for the South Dakota Tourism guide. A great resource to help plan a trip. I used theirs  for planning my trip. It is free if you call or email for a copy to be sent to you. Here is there link.     http://www.travelsd.com/

Driving out west is a really an enjoyable experience for me. I love to drive, and the scenery and wide open spaces make it a relaxing, stress reducing pleasure. I was constantly wanting to stop and take photos but I knew I would never get to Cody before dark. So I had to limit myself, but it was difficult.

This is the Big Horn Pass on I-90 through the Big Horn Mountains. Elevation is about 9700 feet here. Still a lot of pockets of snow even in mid-June. Storm clouds were building here. 

                                                                               

Sometimes I got a little carried away chasing down a good looking landscape scene I wanted to photograph and got off the Interstate and started driving down some roads an overloaded Ford Tarus probably should not have been on.  But hey, anything for the shot!   Right?

As I was approaching Cody Wyoming late in the afternoon I watched this developing storm moving across the vast open plains. The  clouds were only a couple hundred feet off the ground at this point. I pulled over to take some photos. There was some awesome lightning striking the ground, but I could not time it right to capture that. (Oh to have that Lightning Trigger) 

                                                                

  Cody, Wyoming is a really great place to visit. I was actually staying a couple days here because there was more that I wanted to do than I could squeeze in with just a one day visit. One of the most famous landmark's in Cody is the Irma Hotel. The original owner of this hotel was William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. If you know anything about the history of the American West, he is one of the biggest names.

Interior shots of the Irma show what a historical place this is. Listed on the National Historic Register, you can stay at the Irma and stay in rooms that were occupied by some very famous figures in American History. The all Cherrywood Bar was a gift to Buffalo Bill from the Queen of England. Probably the most photographed thing in Cody.  Here is a direct link to the Irma.   http://www.irmahotel.com/

The Cody Gunfighters put on a nightly show outside the Irma that is free to the public. Another must visit attraction is the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Way to much there to cover in my blog, but I added a link to the center. Plan on at least a half day to see it all.

  http://www.bbhc.org/home/index.cfm?CFID=29563765&CFTOKEN=85780842

 

The sun is setting on another day, but the action will pick up again tomorrow!

Road Trip - Day 3

The Black Hills area of South Dakota offers an amazing amount of things to see and do. Enough diverse attractions keep anyone happy no matter what your interests are. With the limited schedule we were on, I had planned several days worth of sightseeing and photography in one long day. June 13th started pretty early. Most of the attractions we wanted to see where in the Rapid City area about 40 miles south. There are a number of wonderful ad reasonably priced hotels in that area, but I stayed in Deadwood for the atmosphere and ambiance of the town. I had planned a route that would circle us back to Deadwood through Sturgis. The early first stop of the day was Custer State Park.

At 71,000 aces, Custer State Park is the second largest state park in America. There are extensive hiking trails and other numerous outdoor activities available at the park. The park has excellent lodges and campground facilities. With a limited amount of time, we concentrated on the 18 mile wildlife loop through the park. For the nature and wildlife photographer in me this offered the best chance to get the types of photos I was looking for. The park has about 1500 Bison roaming free, and they are a magnificent sight to observe. The park has a big herd of wild burros, but with the tourists feeding them constantly, they are sure friendly when you stop. One of my best wildlife photos from that drive was finding this Meadowlark sitting on a rock singing as loud as he possibly could. A Canon 400mm telephoto lens was perfect for filling the frame with him while not even leaving the drivers seat.

 

Driving through Custer State Park gives you a good sense of how this land looked a few hundred years ago before so many humans moved onto the landscape. Springtime is perfect to find the baby animals that have recently been born. The cutness factor is pretty high when you can get good photos of the babies. The adult mammals are shedding their winter coats and look pretty ragged at this time of the year though.

From there it was on to the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is an ongoing project for the past 55 years or so. It is the largest mountain carving project in the world. Entirely funded by private donations, it will dwarf Mount Rushmore in size and scale when it is completed. I wished I would have had the time to take the bus trip up the mountain for a closer look, but with a 400mm lens I could get some good close-up shots from the visitors center. The photo I took here replicates one I saw in the advertisements for this place. The statue outside is a replicas of what the finished sculpture will look like. I just lined them up and shot this with a wide angle lens to fit it all in the frame. Here is the link to the offical site:  http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/

                                                                                                                                                              

                                                          

 The next destination of the day was Mount Rushmore. The Needles Highway, South Dakota Highway 87, between Sylvan Lake and Legion Lake is a superb scenic drive with its winding roads and granite tunnels. When it is crowded it is slow going with the bumper to bumper traffic, but worth it for the views. I could see storm clouds building now by the afternoon hours. When we arrived at Mt Rushmore it had clouded up and started raining. We ate lunch and waited it out and got some clearing skies within an hour or so. I did not take the guided hike up the mountain, so all my photos were from the visitors center area. I liked this one after I converted it to a B&W.  I know most people are familiar with Mt. Rushmore, but if you have never been to see it, make a point of paying a visit. A great symbol of our country and it gave me goose bumps to stand and admire it.

As we left Mt. Rushmore I could see that the break in the weather was over and a big storm was building. We made a stop at Bear Country USA which is a drive-thru wildlife park. I was hoping to possibly get some good photos but the storm caught up to us as we entered the park. We drove through in the rain and tried to wait it out but it looked like it was going to be bad for quite some time. I did manage this shot of an Arctic Wolf as he sat on a grassy knoll in the rain. He was pretty scarred up from fighting with the other wolves.

                                                                  

Deadwood South Dakota lies in a deep gulch high in the Black Hills One of the west's wildest gold rush towns has the distinction of being on the National Historic Register in it's entirety. I regrettably did not take many photos of my short stay in Deadwood. I was out enjoying the town and trying to cover my wife's losses at the slot machines by winning at Blackjack. (Luckily I did) The locals are a colorful bunch, and at night time it can get still get pretty wild in Deadwood.