12.5.2012 – 12.5.2012  23 °C

We set the alarm for early this morning so we could be on the road by 8am towards the Black Hills. We enjoyed a hot breakfast this morning (our first for the trip) before we hauled ourselves out of the hotel and continued on our eastward drive towards the Black Hills.

First problem of the day was that I turned my laptop on after 10mins telling M&D that we needed to take the exit at this little town of Midwest. I looked up thirty minutes later and commented that it was taking us a long time to get to Midwest, to which D replied that we had passed it ‘ages ago’. Damn… (that’s what I get for not watching and navigating.. leave it up to the olds…..) We did a u-turn and headed back down the highway to Midway (about 15mins). Arrived at Midway and I again pulled out my laptop telling the parentals (as my cousin’s daughter calls them) that we needed to go straight ahead and turn right at the end of the road. I told them it was a 50 mile trip so it would take us at least forty minutes to get there. Twenty minutes later D tells me we’ve arrived, to which I tell him it isn’t possible we should be at least another twenty minutes away.. I look up and yep there is a road in front of us. Obviously, it’s the wrong road and unfortunately the road that we needed turned off at Midway (the map shows it heading straight thru but you need to take a turn).. Another detour of forty minutes that we didn’t need!!

At this point of the trip my laptop is packed away and I spend no more time on it as I just can’t blog and navigate at the same time! We finally get going in the right direction and have a very uneventful rest of the trip to the Black Hills. Most of our trip was across the Thunderbasin National Grasslands, which we were hoping meant we’d see heaps of Buffalo… Umm NO! The only Buffalo we saw were eating grass in a little town’s water treatment works!!!! We stopped for morning tea in this small mining town of Newcastle (oil and gas I think) which was not noteworthy except for the fact that the refinery is bang smack in the middle of town opposite the school!! Who would want to send their kids to a school that has its neighbour as an oil refinery??? I think it just sums up Wyoming… there is more oil and gas here than people!

The Black Hills are a real escape from the rolling grey yellow nothingness that is southern Wyoming. As soon as you cross the border to Sth Dakota you start climbing into the hills. They are so named because from a distance the hills look black. The granite hills are covered in pine trees so are very dark as compared to the yellow grasslands. Our first stop, and lunch, was in the south of the hills at Windcave Nat Park. We stopped here so that we could see the caves that riddle the black hills. The Windcave is a huge network of caves that run for hundreds of miles under the ground. We went down with a ranger and explored a very small percentage of the caves. The tour was so civilised that we were walking on concrete pavement thru the caves, that are lit by electricity and culminated in us taking an elevator back to the surface.. very civilised!

The highlight of the caves is the ‘box work’ rock formations. The box work reminds me of the corrugations you can see between cardboard. These spidery rock things are stuck all over the roof (M commented that it reminds her of paper wasps’ nests) and cover most of the caves. They were formed eons ago when the limestone (which used to be between the spidery bits) was dissolved by carbonic acid. The box work that remains is a rock called gypsum which isn’t affected by the acid. The cave wasn’t the most beautiful I’ve ever seen but it was a nice change from looking at above ground rock formations!!

Once we were back on the surface we continued our drive thru the Black Hills to Custer State Park. We were really fortunate, as we saw Buffalo (the Yanks use Buffalo and Bison interchangeably) in the park!! We actually saw a couple of herds and one bison was wandering along the side of the road! Gosh they are big creatures.. apparently they can be temperamental so you do need to be careful. Looking at the size of them there is no risk of me going to closely towards them!!

As well as us seeing Buffalo we saw plenty of prairie dogs.. In one place, they were almost in plague proportions! They certainly aren’t endangered in this part of the world.. We were also fortunate to see itty bitty baby prairie dogs!! So cute! All in all a very cool afternoon’s drive thru the park!

After finishing the park it was starting to get late in the day so we headed towards Hill City where we had planned to find accom for the evening. We drove to Hill City via the Crazy Horse Monument (the other rock carving in the Black Hills.. this is the one of Crazy Horse on his horse, it is only half complete). We could see the monument from the road and were really disappointed.. Only the head has really been carved, the rest is still a big work in progress. Considering it was going to cost us almost thirty dollars to get in to see a half completed sculpture we all unanimously decided to not spend the cash but to save it for the bar up the road!

On arrival in Hill City we found a motel right in the heart of town which we stopped at for the night. 80 dollars later and we were settled in and ready to go for a wander thru the town to see the sites. First stop was at a pub (gee we are getting predicatable) and second stop to a restaurant for a soup dinner. We all went thirds in a Buffalo burger and were not surprised to see that it tasted like Beef.. Did we get Buffalo or does it just taste a heck of a lot like Beef???? Before we knew it we were all in bed (although D was kind enough to do the laundry for us!).

Song of the Day– Bob Marley, Buffalo Soldier