Wyoming and Yellowstone!

We drove across all of South Dakota yesterday - pretty flat, but still green. Wowwee, we sure saw a lot of billboards along the way. They must be an attempt to keep you awake. We are pretty certain we saw well over 100 signs advertising “Wall Drug”, a destination (a town, we think) that we were sorely disappointed by - still not sure what it was. We drove by the Badlands and to our destination - Mount Rushmore! Pretty amazing memorial - not quite as big as it looks in pictures, but still an amazing thing to see in person. We went on from there to see Crazy Horse, another memorial being carved into a mountain about 20 miles from Mt. Rushmore. Neither of us had heard of it before, but it is a memorial to honor American Indians that will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high - an incredible feat once it’s completed, but it is far from completion. Mt. Rushmore is in the Black Hills so we saw some pretty amazing scenery along the way (reminded me of Colorado).

We went on from there to the town of Custer where we had a delicious dinner at a local pizzeria. We stayed with our friend Jess’s parents in the nearby town of Newcastle, WY. And to our surprise we awoke to discover that our classmates Kyle (also from Newcastle) and Heidi were in town, so we got to have breakfast with them. Off to Yellowstone!

On the drive we saw a few deer right next to the road, and even a moose! Right when we got into Yellowstone, we saw a huge buffalo just grazing nearby! Then we realized as we drove further in, there are TONS of buffalo... We made our way to Old Faithful geyser and waited for it to erupt - it went on and off for about 30 mins. So cool!! We drove out of the park and on the way saw a buffalo crossing the road, several more geysers, a wolf, and a buffalo with its baby. We feel like we're in a huge wild animal park with so much to see!