Mount Rushmore and the Devil's Tower have been sitting on my 'to do' list for a very long time. In all my years of going to the Tetons though, the 8 hour drive to Devil's tower has always been too much time from the limited time that I have in order to go out there. I imagine that is the life of most folks - that we have to carefully choose how to spend our very limited free time - and I realize that I have it really really good with a generous PTO package from my employer. For folks who only know me through my photography, my professional work as a photographer is a second business. My day to day work is a social worker at a large hospital in New York City. The Badlands are only about 1 1/2 hours to Mount Rushmore and Mount Rushmore is less than 2 1/2 hours to Devil's Tower...so the excuses no longer existed. This was going to be the year that I get to visit these two iconic locations.

We left the Badlands and drove to Mount Rushmore by way of Custer State Park. We got a place in the town of Custer that called itself Pet Friendly and had lovely photos of dog bones on beds and things. It bothers me that again you are hit with another pet fee ($50 bucks this time) for the privlege of staying in a hotel room that we all know is not actually deep cleaned between visits. My experience is that they just as often stick the dogs in a smoking room as they are anything else...not that I am bitter. In retrospect, we probably should have stayed at the KOA for the night which was five minutes from Rushmore, but I did not feel like breaking out the tent for 24 hours or a cabin without sheets or air conditioning and at this point an actual hotel room sounded pretty good..

Custer State Park is a really cool park that I encourage everyone to drive through if they are out that way. The admission price is 25 bucks for a week, but at a time when Parks are in the cross hairs, I don't mind supporting them. Custer has a variety of different routes - one of which is dedicated to Wildlife viewing. There is also a route with some pretty wild rock formations that I did not get a chance to see while I was there. Next time.

From Custer, we drove to