Jessica's Wedding - Day 4

What a great night!  Relaxing in our hotel room after the previous day's adventures was a genuine pleasure.  I think this was the best sleep I'd had in the last few nights, so I was not complaining.

Heading down to breakfast in the morning, the small dining room was bustling with people.  Laura and I had breakfast, while Ramona took a walk in the cool morning air.  The weather was quite mild this morning, so she took advantage of a good walk through the small shops near the hotel.  The Roosevelt Inn offered a stay just minutes from Mount Rushmore, and the packed parking lot tipped me off that there would be plenty of folks at breakfast.  I was right.  In addition to the usual breakfast fair, they also featured a pancake "machine", essentially spitting out small pancakes.  Laura had never seen one before and seemed impressed.

Thanks to our busy schedule yesterday, we had seen so many sights that we were ahead of schedule.  This allowed us a later departure and a more-leisurely day.  Mona and I took a short walk up the street, taking a look in a few more stores.  Returning to the hotel, we loaded up and prepared for our longest day of driving.

This morning, we headed through Custer State Park.  Like the trip to the Badlands yesterday, this gave us another opportunity to appreciate the scenery of the Black Hills.  The roads were extremely winding, which the many motorcyclists we saw were enjoying.  We wound through the park and connected with the Needles Highway, the road that would lead us through two tunnels.  We meandered along, seeing not only a bison alongside the road, but many hawks as well.  You might not see him clearly in the picture to the right, but this hawk circled several minutes above us, patiently scouring the ground for his next meal.  Returning to the car, we continued on through many scenic overlooks, until we passed Sylvan Lake Lodge.  This small lake seemed to attract throngs of people - fishermen, swimmers, hikers, kayakers - all enjoying the lake.

As we neared the end of the park, we pushed onward to Custer.  Hoping to get a quick meal, we found the deli and local market were already busy, even though it was barely Noon.  With few options in town, we decided to drive a little further.  One upside: we saw some amusing sights along the road.  We noted many prairie dogs along the road, popping in and out of their little burrows.  We pulled off and had a "conversation" with them - barking back at their little yappings.

We decided to push on to our next stop: The Crazy Horse Memorial.  Not far from Custer, this memorial is the site of massive undertaking: carving a 660-foot granite mountain into a memorial to the legendary Lakota warrior.  The project began in the late 1940s and has slowly been making progress ever since.  The memorial site includes an expansive museum, with many exhibits of Native American art, beadwork and carvings.  I found the museum personally moving, as it provided a dose of reality to the current plights of Native Americans, as well as highlighting their successes.

The Crazy Horse Memorial left a strong impression on us, and made a fitting end to the last of the major stops on our trip.  With this last visit complete, we had checked off all the things we had decided to do on the trip.  Now, we were left with driving several hundred miles toward the wedding location: Lincoln, Nebraska.  After some discussion, we chose to drive as far as we could towards Lincoln.  Valentine or Oneill would put us just a few hours from Lincoln, but either would take us 5.5 to 6 hours.

With such a long drive ahead, it's no wonder Mona made sure we stopped for ice cream!  Two Cows Creamery was along our path in Hot Springs, South Dakota, so we stopped by for a snack.  The sign on the door read "Farm to Table, Cow to Cone" - I won't forget this one anytime soon!

Much of the rest of the drive was a multi-hour push through the winding, rolling hillsides.  We drove along the southern part of South Dakota, pushing through Pine Ridge and Olala Lakota Indian Reservations, before crossing into northern Nebraska.  The weather was kind and the traffic almost nonexistent, so we had plenty of time to talk, nap and drive.

Just after sunset, we arrived in Atkinson, Nebraska, just twenty minutes west of Oneill.  The small motel Laura found, Sandhills Guest House Motel, was highly-rated and one of the few hotels we could find.  Still, it was more than comfortable for one night's rest.  Tomorrow would see us make the final push to Lincoln for the wedding!