#258 – Monday, Aug. 26, 2019 – Buffalo, Prairie Dogs, Hills, Curves and Crazy Horse

Above is a map of the area.  At the very bottom of the map you see the blue lake…that is where we are camping.  The closest town (10 miles away) is Hot Springs with a population of 3711.

I left the campground about 11:00am.  I drove thru park of Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park and Hill City enjoying the beautiful day, the buffalo, the prairie dogs and lovely views.  There were not a lot of people.  This is definitely the time to visit.

At 6:00pm I moved on to Crazy Horse Memorial to see how much more had been completed since my last visit.  It did not look much different to me.

I had some dinner at their restaurant and stayed for their laser light show that they project on the memorial.  It was to start at 8:30pm and by then it was 55 degrees with strong winds….too cold for me.  Fortunately you can view the memorial from the parking lot so I went to the car about 8:00pm and moved it to the end of the parking lot along with several others and watched the show from the warmth of my car.  It lasted about 25 minutes.  It was interesting but I would not need to see it again.

The bad thing was since the campground is so far south it was an hour drive in the dark thru areas with animals that regularly cross the roads.  I made it back safely.