Mount Rushmore and Needles Highway - Skywatch Friday

"The heads" (as the locals call them) from inside the park.

From the trail that goes underneath the heads.  You can get pretty close.

The main entrance. We were trying to guess the state flags without looking at the state (at least the southern ones anyway). I must have slept through that class.

The view from the parking deck at Mount Rushmore. It was just starting to cloud up.

Looking over at Needles Highway.

Driving through Needles Highway. It was a tight squeeze at some points.

Going through the tunnel. There were several of these that we passed through.

One last post from my trip to South Dakota.

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Wild things at the Great Plains Zoo

Robins where everywhere.

Cute little chipmunk with some kind of food in his mouth. I think this is food from one of the zoo animals. I don't get to see chipmunks in central Florida so I was excited to see them here.

Beautiful butterflies were everywhere.

The zoo was full of canadian geese. They were sleeping or grazing in most of the exhibits.

Since my sister lives close to the zoo in Sioux Falls, we decided to spend a little time there walking around on my last day of the visit. It was sunny and 70 degrees so we had to get out after spending so much time in the car driving back from Rapid City. It's a small zoo but very nice. They had a large variety of animals there including wild geese that seemed to be resting on their way south. It was a perfect way to end a visit in South Dakota.