SYLVAN LAKE at Custer State Park, South Dakota

 

Custer State Park is known as one of the best state parks in America and Sylvan Lake is its crown jewel.  The lake gives the appearance of a glacier created lake, but in truth it is manmade.  It seems that Theodore Reder constructed a dam across Sunday Gulch Creek in 1881. A mile long loop trail encircles the lake and the many rock formations provide ample opportunity for scrambling and posing for photographs.

Many more strenuous hikes start  around the Loop Trial, but none are as much fun as the hike around the lake with your family.  

The rock formations that surround half the lake resemble the ruins of a gothic castle. The lake located five miles from Mt Rushmore and was featured in the movie, National Treasures: Book of Secrets as being located behind the mountain.  It is one of the more photographic lake vistas that I have ever seen.  We hiked the trail counterclockwise leaving the rock scrambling to the second half of the trail.

The trail seems to dead end at the rock wall which surrounds the dam.  The bridge over the dam is accessed by negotiating some rocks on the banks of the lake to reach the bridge sidewalk.  

The bridge goes nowhere as the trail snakes behind the rock wall.  But from the dam you can get a nice view of the lake and the spillway.  Along the trail around the rocks, passing through a narrow passage you can enjoy the first of many rock scrambles.

If you look around, you may even find a cave to explore!

I checked out the spillway and got a nice shot of the bridge from beneath the dam.

Walking up the trail from the dam, we began our rock scramble in earnest. But we first had to pause to watch a rock climber negotiate one of the massive granite towers that surround the lake.  This is something a Fat Bald White Guy would never do!

Trudging up trail stairs, I was reminded that we were hiking at 6000 feet, the same elevation as the Grassy Bald at Roan Mountain!  Did I say anything about how I hate trail stairs!   But at the top of the stairs there were many opportunities to climb high above the lake on the rock castle walls.

From the top of one of these rock walls, I captured one of the best shots of the morning of the rock formations on the shoreline behind the trailhead. 

As a parting gift, the lake gives hikers one last enticing rock climb over large formations that protrudes into the lake forming a granite peninsula. While I was not looking Grayboy and Billy Buck climbed to the top and taunted me from above.  Oh how youth is wasted on the young!

If there is a perfect short hike in South Dakota, I believe we found it while hiking the Sylvan Lake Loop. It was a short well maintained trail which I am sure can get quite social.  The scenery is stunning.  The rock scrambling is always fun. I wish we had time to rent a kayak and explore the lake more.  

Virginia is for lovers so they say but South Dakota is for kissers it would seem! It seems that Billy Buck caught Whitdawg and Grayboy in a moment of tender reflection at Sylvan Lake!  This lake is special and if you get a chance you need to find out why!

MOUNT RUSHMORE

 Deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota, near Custer State Park is located a mountain, known to the Lakota Sioux as "Six Grandfathers". In 1885, it  was renamed by and for a mining company lawyer, Charles E. Rushmore. In a unique twist of fate, it became the location of one of the most iconic vistas of Americana. 

In the early 1920's, an absurdly insensitive proposal to promote tourism to the Black Hills, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson sought to sculpt the Cathedral Spires into historic figures of the old west.  Notwithstanding that these mountains are considered sacred by the Sioux, the desecration of the natural beauty of these unique geological formations would have been criminal!

When the originally desired sculptor proved unavailable, Robinson sought out Danish born Gutzon Borglum who had a different concept for the statue which fortunately dictated a different location as well.

"I want to create a monument so inspiring that people from all over American will be drawn to come and look and go home better citizens" - Gutzon Borglum

"The preservation of the sacred fire of Liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are considered as deeply, perhaps as finely staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." - George Washington

"We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race.  The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self government."- Thomas Jefferson 

" We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received and each must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune." - Theodore Roosevelt 

"I leave you hoping that the Lamp of Liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall be no longer any doubt that all men are created free and equal."- Abraham Lincoln

"Freedom is not America's gift to the world, freedom is Almighty's gift to every person who lives in this world"- George W. Bush

So why is a monument built on the sacred land of native Lakota Sioux honoring four white men, two of whom were slave owners, important to Americans?  Simply, the American ideal however imperfectly implemented has produced the most free, the most prosperous, the most technologically proficient civilization the world has ever known.  Americans need not apologize for our history for we are an imperfect people striving for a self perfecting ideal, that all people are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights as human beings.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in our bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in the United States when men were free." -  Ronald Reagan

THE BADLANDS

 

In the high plains of South Dakota there is a desolate place known as "The Badlands". It is a 244,000 acre National Park and contains some of the most unique landscapes. On a cool and windy day, the Fat Bald White Guy and his family visited Badlands National Park.  

Seventy-Five Million years ago, much of this area was covered by a sea.  As the water receded, the landscape of the sea bottom remained.  Today a paved South Dakota Highway snakes through the sand castles and a top the edge of moonscape valleys. 

Within the desolate landscape are layers of color formed by layers of sediments swept there by the movement of sea currents.  The colors are stunning in both color and consistency.  We believe that the caramel colored lines reminded us of both caramel kiss candies and fudge ripple ice cream.

Once the sea receded, ancient rivers snaked through this area, carving sand castles with spires and spectacular mountain ridges.

Amazing contrast to the sand colored valleys and peaks are found bright green grasslands that are the homeplace of a variety of wildlife. 

Big horned sheep dot the valley ledges.  Prairie dogs and buffalo occupy the adjacent grasslands. I followed one big horn sheep and got several nice shots of this uniquely beautiful creature.

For the photographer, at every turn there is a new spectacular view.  The unique colors and structures of peaks and valleys made me think that God was building sand castles for us to enjoy.

One ridge was adorned with an emerald green grass collar near its precipice.  This color provided another colored stripe on the face of the ridge contrasted with the grey blue clouds above it.

Mostly the Badlands remind you of some other world seen in science fiction movies.  Several classic moonscape valleys dotted the roadside vistas.  You would expect a moon rover to appear over the horizon at any moment.

The movie Starship Troopers used the Badlands as a backdrop of a scene of an interstellar world.  And Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves also filmed scenes in the park.

The Badlands are located about 45 minutes from Rapid City South Dakota.  You may combine a visit with a trip to the famous Wall Drug and also visit a nearby Minuteman Nuclear Missile museum as well.

We could have spent an entire day there but settled for a trip through the park on Badlands Loop road. There are many places to pull over and take pictures. A visit late in the day provides many sunset vistas as backdrops to the park's natural beauty.

We visited the Badlands the afternoon that we landed in Rapid City.  Our destination was Custer South Dakota to visit Mt. Rushmore. It proved a good decision as the Badlands is a good distance from Rushmore.  

The Fat Bald White Guy is out of his hiking element while in South Dakota but a visit to the Badlands should be a part of any trip to South Dakota.