8-3-12 Day 7 Exploring Attractions south of Rapid City

Been a bunch of long action packed days so I've fallen behind in my posts. Trying to get caught up a little today. Friday we got up to another sunny day. Temp was about 62 when we headed out at 8 am to gas & go. Todays plan was to do a loop that hit the attractions south of Rapid City. We headed down 16 south out of Rapid toward Mt. Rushmore about 30 miles away. Once you get near the Town of Keystone you get onto 16A which is called Iron Mountain Road! This is probably the best road I've ridden. I have not rode the Tail of the Dragon but Mark in our group has and he agrees that Iron Mountain is better. Have you ever ridden a pigtail bridge? It's basically a tight corkscrew turn with a bridge for an overpass. There are two of them and several tunnels thrown in along with a gazillion switchbacks! Sorry but I still haven't figured out the GoPro link. 16A winds through Custer State Park, then meets 87 which is the Needles Highway which is also a sweet road. To me what makes these roads extra special is the scenery like these pics.

On Iron Mountain Road

On 16A inside Custer Park grounds

On Needles Highway. Look close in the center and you can see vehicles waiting their turn to go through a tunnel. This is about 8 feet wide and maybe 12' high and about 100 - 120 ' long so it's alternateing traffic. I wouldn't wanna do it in a motorhome! We turned left down 89 South from the north end of the Needles highway and headed into Custer for lunch. Every town out here is geared up for Bike week and has the welcome mat out in a big way with designated bike parking front & center all around town. Custer even had a small vendor area setup as well. After lunch we headed for Jewell Cave National Mon. on 16 west. We got there about 2:30 and they were booked til at least 5:30 so we opted to get tickets for the first tour in the morning at 9:20 tomorrow. We backtracked on 16 back to Custer and picked up 385N to Crazy Horse Memorial and arrived about 3:45. It's quite the story on this memorial and pretty amazing how one man, Korzak Ziolkowski, took on this project and that no Gov't funding has been used! When (if) completed it will make Rushmore a dwarf in comparison. They have a very ambitious vision of the campus they envision here and have made significant progress. You can check it out here. http://crazyhorsememorial.org

From Crazy Horse we continued north on 385 to 244 east to Mt. Rushmore were we arrived near 6pm. This memorial is well laid out and is able to move people through very well. As a matter of fact even though there are several hundred thousand extra folks here for bike week we haven't really had any difficultly getting around or waiting!!!!

From Rushmore we headed back up 16 into Rapid and went straight to the Firehouse Brewing company for dinner a little after 8. Being Friday night it was busy but we only had to wait about 20-30 minutes to get seated. They give you plastic fireman hats to wear, which very few people do, but our crew after a long day was a bit punch drunk by this time and we provided the entertainment for the rest of the folks there!!! After dinner we got back to the hotel about 11ish and called it a day as we have to be on the road by 7:45 to make our Jewell Cave tour.