Black Hills (Sylvan Lake, The Needles and Custer State Park)

As you may have noticed by now most of our connections with national history is through pop culture such as North by Northwest, the Flinstones, and the movie Dances with Wolves. Sylvan Lake is a serene lake in the black hills rimmed by rock formations that come directly out of the water. But more importantly it served as a setting in one of the kids favorite movies - "National Treasure".

In the rocks surrounding the lake we found a passge way that lead to the hiking paths. Karly was first to go.

We hiked for a couple of hours. Lisa wanted to stop about 20 ft from the top.

As the rocks were getting very steep and dangerous I considered the situation.

You can always make more children I concluded. A quote from Star Trek is always appropriate "The higher, the fewer."

Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are just dangerous. Reinhold Messner

If you don't let go, you can't fall off! Jerry Moffat

At the top!

After descending the mountain we took a drive along one of the first roads in the black hills. It was larger than a one lane but not quite two lanes. This is the view from the Needles Scenic Highway.

The Needles.

A one lane tunnel. "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers"

Note the GPS in the above picture. We used it heavily. I finally figured out why it allowed me to go 10 miles in the wrong direction at the end of the scenic highway - Obviously it wanted to show us the buffalo.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam”