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After leaving Yellowstone and driving forever across eastern Montana, we crossed into North Dakota, specifically to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This park encompasses the badlands area of North Dakota which is not as "bad" as South Dakota's. We camped in the national park for two nights and enjoyed the 30-mile scenic drive through the southern unit of the park. In all our travels, we have never seen wild horses. Well, lo and behold, we saw four different groups of them during our two days in the park. They looked happy, wild and free.

After leaving North Dakota, we headed to the Black Hills of South Dakota to camp for a few days. We can truly say the Black Hills are beautiful and we have a number of beautiful photographs. While camped in Spearfish, SD, we made a day trip to Devils Tower National Monument in eastern Wyoming. It is quite amazing and is a religious site for the area Indians. Visit it and you will see why it is revered.

I suppose everyone who visits the Black Hills visits Mt. Rushmore. Just like all the other visitors, we had to have our picture taken in front of the four famous faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln.

Just outside the entrance of Mt. Rushmore we ran across old number 67 and his buddies. It really would be nice if we had visible wildlife in Arkansas like you see out west.

About 10 miles from Mt. Rushmore, an active carving of Crazyhorse is underway. Actually, the mountain carving was started in 1949 and is still being worked on by the children of the original sculptor. While we were there, we got to see them blast some rock from the mountainside. This particular carving is on a scale much grander than the Mt. Rushmore memorial. Looks like they may have another 50 years of carving to do.

While in South Dakota we spent a couple of nights in Custer State Park. The terrain of the park is simply outstanding and we highly recommend a visit there. We also saw many groups of wild turkeys. Here is a picture of three big, beautiful birds.

Everybody has heard of the Badlands of South Dakota and are they ever bad! Just outside the city of Wall, SD, we got our first glimpse of them. I can see why all of the early settlers avoided this area. It just looks impossible for any mode of travel. Thank goodness for modern highways in the area, allowing tourists to see this highly eroded land.

This big sheep was either wary or shy because it would not face us. Ann worked hard just to get this photo of such a magnificant animal.