Continuing west we headed into the Black Hills of SD and to a place I’ve not visited before..

I’m particularly proud of this photo.. it is completely unaltered, uncropped. The light was perfect and the photo really shows the details of the “carving” of the individual faces.

A little more context, taken from the usual tourist location.

It is difficult to get a new take on something photo’d millions of times before.

View from Custer National Park over the Black Hills forest.

We did stop to see how the “new” Crazy Horse monument was coming along.. Not too good. It’s still only about 10% finished, a full 70 years after starting the project. When complete, it will be a marvel – you can barely see some people along the railing near the crane – it will dwarf Mt. Rushmore in scope.. it’s just that none of us will live long enough to see it done. Funding comes 100% from private sources – and those are apparently hard to come by. My thought is that the Chinese government should offer funding and laborers to get the job done in about 2 years. I’m sure our government would object, but it would expose some inconsistencies in priorities.

On to another attraction that doesn’t lack for tourist photos – Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

Josie has no idea about Close Encounters..

Hiking right at the base. We spent the morning in the park and did the 2 mile hike that goes around the tower. We’re in high elevations now (4000+ ft) and the temperatures have dropped into the 50’s at night.

Entering Bighorn National forest in Wyoming.

Up near the top of the pass, just a tad over 9000 feet.

We found an area at the top where we could go for a hike (huffing and puffing a lot at this altitude) and let Winston run around freely without bothering anyone.

We wanted to play in some snow still around in June.

Coming back down on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains. The Shoshone mountains and the start of Yellowstone National Park off in the distance.