My First "Week End" in South Dakota

My days off this season are Friday and Saturday which I really like.  This quickly becomes referred to as "your weekend".  It also means I always seem to have my days mixed up.

Centennial Trail - Makes
me want to hike!

My first Friday off I went with John and Sherry and another co-worker to Wind Cave National Park.  Actually, we dropped John off at a trail head - he is hiking the Centennial Trail over the summer.   The rest of us went to Wind Cave and did the museum and tunnel tour.  Wind Cave is one of the longest tunnels in the world - really fascinating and different from other caves I have toured.   After our tour, we picked John up and found a spot to have our picnic lunch.  This is their second year here, so they drove me around and showed me some of the sites.   Beautiful scenery and places I'll go back to over the summer.  We ended the day with a stop at the Purple Pie Shop in Custer.

Some of the animals we saw were buffalo, wild burrows, and prairie dogs among others.

Wild Burrow

Feed me!!!

Saturday, Doris (another co-worker) and I went on a day-long bus tour of the area in an open-top bus.  There were seven of us on the tour - all freebies but one paying passengers.  As a seasonal worker in the area, we get VIP passes which gets us freebies or reduced tickets to various attractions.  We met the bus in Keystone at 9:15 a.m. and were dropped back off around 6:00 p.m.  A long day!  We had a great group and enjoyed visiting with them.  The tour included stops at Mount Rushmore (I got to pick up my Netflix dvds!), Custer State Park, The Needles Highway, Crazy Horse, and driving through the area.  Some of the same places I had been to the day before were included.  It was a good overview of the area for someone with limited time.  But, it was a long day for me - I needed a nap!!

Crazy Horse