Day 10

We woke up early (well vacation early) to get to see the wildlife before it bedded down for the mid-day heat. The loop that I planned out looked like it would take about an hour on the map. In reality it took all morning but was the high point of the trip so far for me. We started by driving to Sylvan Lake, which had some majestic rock features. From there we drove along the Needles Highway to The Needles Eye rock. We had to do a lot of uphill driving to get there and we were glad to not have the trailer with us. At the Needles Eye there was a "narrow tunnel". By narrow I mean 8'4" wide and I think it was 10' tall (whatever the height defiantly not trailer friendly). Getting the truck through the tunnel was extremely tight, enough to where I wanted the side mirrors folded in.

It was at this point that we entered Custer State Park. While we do not think that highly of Custer himself, the park was amazing. Yesterday at the Crazy Horse Memorial we were shocked to see how low the buffalo population got. We were worried that we would not see any buffalo on the Wildlife Loop Road because of how late we got there, but we saw plenty. Additionally we saw some white tailed deer, donkeys, and pronghorns, but no bighorn sheep or mountain goats (fun fact, not actually goats).

The last stretch of our loop was the Iron Mountain Road. There were some great views along this road included views of Mount Rushmore again. We came across more narrow tunnels through the rock which were cool but none as narrow as the one by the Needles Eye.