Day 6: Kennebec, SD - Buffalo, WY

Day 6 – Kennebec, South Dakota to Buffalo, Wyoming

YEAH!!! We are stopping at our first major point of interest today… Mount Rushmore. We left Kennebec around 8:30am and traveled West on I-90. The landscape began to change to the Badlands… just imagine a good old western movie. It’s amazing and breathtaking! We began seeing a few prong horn antelope and then a few more… probably several hundred to date. Some really nice trophy bucks right next to the road… gorgeous. Did you know that they are the second fastest mammal on earth next to the cheetah? There you have it…

Arrived Rapid City about 11am and as we were pulling off the exit, Drew noticed two B-1 stealth bombers circling and landing at Ellsworth A.F.B. Did you know that this air force base is one of two bases in North America to have B-1 bombers? The other base is in Alabama. During the Gulf Wars, these stealth bombers flew to Iraq, launched cruise missles and flew back within 24 hours. They are supersonic… wow!

We stopped at a fairly new South Dakota Visitor Center on the East side of Rapid City… stretched our legs, picked up some nice tourist brochures and got directions and local maps from a very nice center employee… eh. We traveled South out of Rapid City, through Keystone on Hwy. 16 to Mount Rushmore. The road was fairly steep and curvy and our motorhome struggled along… this thing weighs 12,000 pounds. Mom, Dad, my niece, Andrea and my nephew, Spencer and I traveled to Mount Rushmore about 40 years ago. Keystone has become very touristy and the simple park entrance to Mount Rushmore that I remembered at 12 years old is now an elaborate and expensive granite monument in itself. But the Presidents faces were just the same… impressive.

As we made our way towards the monument, there were four mountain goats near the walkway. It’s very unusual to see them near people and they were not fenced in. Drew asked one of the park rangers “what makes the goats stay in the area, do you feed them?” He said no, but there is a mountain lion in the area and they are less scared of people then they are of the mountain lion. They munched on the local fauna and crossed the path right in front of us.

A quick potty break for Brigit and Riley who were patiently waiting in the KeyZRV and we were back on the road for a quick stop to see the Crazy Horse Monument about 20 miles south. We then traveled north through the Black Hills National Forest and the small towns of Lead and Deadwood. Coming into Deadwood at the top of the mountain was an enormous working gold mine… I would love to have a piece of that. The town sure had some history… Drew and I thought of the Showtime series Deadwood and what life would have been like then. On to Sturgis and Spearfish and across the border into Wyoming.

Although we stopped at Mt. Rushmore and detoured through the Badlands and the Black Hills, we still traveled 445 miles and 9 hours on the road. The weather was chilly but sunny most of the day. We needed to make the time because stormy weather, along with some of the highest roads in the country was still ahead. We pulled into Buffalo, Wyoming about 7pm and stayed at the Twin Peaks RV Park. Uh oh... starting to rain and we know snow is falling in the Big Horn Mts.