June 20Th through the 26th

John and Linda met us in Murdo and we caravanned to the Bad Lands. Upon arriving we quickly parked our RV's in an RV park and went exploring. The Bad Land hills are rugged and very beautiful with the laqyers of colors in the rocks. We took a lot of pictures even with the heat over 100 every day.(pictures) When we were in Murdo, Gus and Mel recommended we stop at a quaint bar in Scenic, SD. The name of the town was far from scenic but the bar had true character.(picture) An old timer was the Bartender and he told us stories for about an hour, he was so busy talking he never asked us if we wanted anything to drink. The floor was sawdust and the walls were covered with autographs of some famous people and not so famous people who had stopped there and left their autographs. Needless to say we went on our way to Hermosa without having anything to drink or leave our autograph.
We are staying in a very nice camp ground in Hermosa, SD. It is centrally located for a lot of things we want to do in the Black Hills. Our friends John and Linda have their RV parked beside us and we ride together to do our sight seeing which makes it a lot more fun with more ideas on what to see and do. There is a lot of a lot of wild life everywhere, especially in Custer State Park. We went down the Needles Highway and met some people who said we needed to see it by going up the highway, so the next day we went up the highway. At the top is a large granite pinnacle carved by nature to form a natural opening like the eye of a needle. This land mark is called "The Eye of the Needle". The road is very narrow and going through some of the stone tunnels the larger trucks folded their side mirrors in.
From there we went to Lead and Deadwood. Kevin Costner owns the neatest casino in Deadwood. It has a restaurant on the top floor and there are huge pictures of most of his movies hanging all over the restaurant, and the food is very good.
One day we rented paddle boats and paddled all over Legion Lake after we ate a lovely picnic lunch there. We played putt putt golf one day and the next day we went to Keystone and took a chair lift up the mountain and rode down on a real curvy slide on toboggans that reminded me of the Olympics. We went to Mount Rushmore twice. We went during the day and again at night to see the lighting of the mountain. We had dinner in the restaurant on Mt. Rushmore and it was beautiful. Tomorrow we are headed for home again. Kent has an appointment with his eye Dr. We are both looking forward to seeing our families and friends.