S. Dakota, last day....

Last day of our S. Dakota trip was all about watching wild animals....We went to this "bear country" which was closed to our hotel. It was raining a little bit so the photos didn't turn out all that well....but it was fun to see a lot of wild animals in real life. We were not supposed to even open our car windows while we were driving. (We did sometimes just to take certain photos...) Here are the photos :)

Moose....the 2nd one has weird fur....

The wolf looked like a big dog...

Sheep with big horns....

Those two mountain lions were walking restlessly when we were watching them.....

Bears....most of them rub their butts against branches and rocks....they must have really itchy butts...


Ugly buffalo...the young one is actually yellow looking like a regular cow...oh and the young one jumps and skips just like a kid...

Big boss bear thinking about how to escape from the park....deep thoughts....

Cute river otters who wanted to take photos cuz they just kept running to where we were....

Can you tell what those spiky balls are??? Porcupines....

Skunk....before it becomes a hat....

Black and White raccoons....

Big cats....fine they are not cats....but they are called Bob cats...I don't like the 1st name...

Little bears sleeping....

Photo of foxes....I think they act like cats too....


Took a photo of the entrance AFTER we went through the whole park :)

So a real size bear is much taller than me when it stands up....

Bunch of teddy bears on the wagon....

After bear country we went back to Rapid City for the last time. Took this photo on the car....

We had lunch at the 2nd best restaurant at Rapid city before we left. This place was actually better and more worth the money I think...They had all sorts of interesting dishes, and the artichoke dip, beer sausages, and Billy's beef briskets were all quite good and unique :)



Random shot I took at a wall outside of TJMax, where we went right before we went to the airport.....They had bunch of this on the wall....kinda weird....oh and this concludes the photos of the whole trip :)

S. Dakota, Day 2

2nd day of our trip it was pouring in the morning....I wasn't so sure what we could do since it was raining hard, but we headed out anyway....We kept on driving and thought we were going to the big cave so it would not matter if it was raining....but then the sun came out half way and we ended up checking out Crazy Horse and Custer national park at the end....I guess it was quite a lucky day on the weather part :)

The sculpture and the real mountain carving. The head of the Indian took two fifty years for the sculptor, and the horse head which is marked with white drawing is supposed to be done in SEVEN years...This is the biggest mountain carving of the whole world, and is still being done by the kids of the original sculptor!!!!

Indian tents....


Pretty glass beads Indian people use to make jewelries....

We took a bus to get to a spot where we can see the head more clearly....The head is huge, like 4 (or 10?) times of all those presidental heads added together at Mt. Rushmore....



As we were leaving the weather was gloomy again...

Saw a wild deer while we were driving around...

This the Sylvan lake I saw on a postcard in those small gift shops. I wanted to check it out since I am a big fan of lakes....and I guess that was a good move since we got to drive through Custer national park which we really didn't expect to visit at 1st :) Oh and there was a wedding going on. I bet the couple getting married was wondering when the rain was gonna rain.....maybe the rain stopped just for them....


We took some photos at the needle eye. The tunnels around there sometimes can only allow ONE car to pass. It was quite fun to drive around there I thought...


We saw whole bunch of chipmunks at one place....I am pretty sure there were more than like 30 of them or something....People stopped to feed them so they were running everywhere :)

The hills in the park are actually quite nice but since weather wasn't all that good it's hard to tell the colors sometimes....

Pretty nice colors with the needles....

We saw some wild sheep...and also a weird lonly BUFFALO!!!!

Found this place for dinner by Yelp. It's supposed to be the best restaurant in town since the town was so small. It's semi-French and we couldn't get in without reservation. We had to go back at 8pm to have our dinner....


Pretty nice cute environment....

The best part was the appetizer....which was scallops with nice creamy vegetable sauce....The steak Billy got and the shrimps I ordered were only ok....

Asked the waiter to take photos for us....

Dessert was only ok...creme brulee and chocolate cookies....That ended our second day, and the dinner went past 10 pm.....orz....