M&I / GBMINI

Another primary goal of our trip midwest was this “mountain carving” of four presidents; we’d read positive and less so things about it, but it was pretty impressive for us! It maybe helps to have a good zoom camera …

From here we took a drive along the beautiful Iron Mountain Road with vistas that look out towards Mount Rushmore, including a tunnel that aims direct to the distant view! There’s also some lovely wooden “pigtail bridges” that curl around on themselves. All quite lovely:

From here we continued to the Needles highway with one quite narrow pass, and loads of incredible views (not of Mount Rushmore, this time!):

On our way to Mount Rushmore, we stopped in town and viewed a few of the sculptures (there’s one for almost every US president!); see how many you can recognize:

Finally we reach one of our “real” goals for this trip – and Badlands is not disappointment, but an incredible place with geological features everywhere. We walked a few of the trails, and drove end to end and more, fabulous!

We also visited a “Prairie Dog Town” which definitely had loads of the little creatures, not very scared of people either!