Custer State Park and the Black Hills

We arrived here in South Dakota's Black Hills on May 10, after a quick drive up from central Texas.   We pulled into Wheels West RV Park between Custer and the west entrance to Custer State Park late in the day, and on Monday checked in at the park headquarters.  Our orientation and training for our summer jobs as Entrance  Gate Attendants began Tuesday morning.
We will be seasonal employees of South Dakota Parks, and will work 8 hour shifts at one of the 5 entrance stations to the 71,000 acre park (it's the second largest state park in the nation, after Anza-Borrego Park in California, a hundred miles west of us in Yuma). 
Wildlife is one of the big items here at CSP -- the biggest draw is a large herd of buffalo (about 1200 head), which are allowed to roam relatively unencumbered anywhere in the park.  The park also supports Big Horn sheep, Mountain Goats, Elk, Deer, Wild Burros, Prairie Dogs, Mountain Lions, and numerous other wildlife -- all of which are pretty used to humans being nearby (well, maybe not the Mountain Lions . . . . ).  The largest wildlife issue the park has to deal with is keeping the people a safe distance from the bison/buffalo -- the same issue that the NPS has to deal with in Yellowstone with the bears.
Our orientation and training consisted of about 50% classroom work, with the other half consisting of introducing us to all the lodges and facilities in the park (which are run by a concessionaire) - and to the significant tourist attractions near the park -- Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave, Crazy Horse Memorial, Jewel Cave, etc.  The bottom line was that our orientation was a week and a half of tours and visitations inside and outside the park -- tough duty to take.
We're now through Memorial Day weekend, and are working full time at our entrance station duties.  The weather this weekend did not cooperate with the people expecting to have summer start this weekend, so we probably won't be working our butts off -- but that's good as we're still getting all of our facts and procedures straight.
Here are a few of the pictures of the sights we've seen over the past week or two --
 Crazy Horse Memorial -- we were able to take a very special tour out onto the ledge which will be the arm of Crazy Horse -- and were able to get right under the face.  Later in the week we went back for a blast of over 100 tons of granite off of the lower part of the monument.


 This picture shows the current state of the memorial in the distance, and in the foreground, the carving of what it will eventually look like.  We went out on the large ledge to the right of his face, which will be his arm.







These are several of the close-ups we took of the face while out on the arm -- it was really a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
 

Here is a sequence of the dynamite blast which we got to see . . . this is from about 3 miles away.



Overall, we've been most impressed with the Crazy Horse Memorial -- even more than Mt. Rushmore.

Of course we got a few pictures of the park's wildlife. . . .




 

Here is Greg at one of the entrance stations we work at -- this one is at the West Entrance to the park.









We did our obligatory visit to Mount Rushmore -- pretty impressive!!


These views are from the drive along the Needles Highway in the northwest portion of the park.  The highway goes through several very narrow tunnels and ends at Sylvan Lake -- which you may recognize from the recent Nicholas Cage National Treasure 2 movie (which tried to make you believe that the lake is just behind Mt. Rushmore).

We're planning on doing lots more exploring of the area, and will update with pictures as soon as we can -- but working 40 hours per week is putting a crimp in our time for right now.