Black Hills

Black Hills Trip

18^th-20^th of May

First up, Sorry it’s taken me so long to post anything.

Last month, the weekend that Summer Break started, the other Local IEC took myself, Tina, a Swedish guy named Carl and one former exchange student to the Black Hills in South Dakota.

    The night before we had picked Tina up and she stayed the night, then, bright and early on Friday morning, we left to go to Osmond, where the other IEC, Luella, lives. We met her former exchange student, Danielle, who was from New Zealand, and then set off to pick Carl up.
    Then, we began the long and tiring seven and a half hours to the Black Hills. We stopped a few times for gas/petrol and to sight see a place or two.There was also some nature drive, where there were donkeys who you could feed (Not sure if you were actually allowed to, but all the cars in front and behind us did) And also loads of wild buffalo. Further along, we went to an old building, forgot what it was for, but from there you could see Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse Mountain and a few other landmarks from the area.

    

Wild Buffalo :D

Donkey feeding :P

Some old building, turned into a small lookout

That night, we went to Mt Rushmore! (The mountain with the four presidents faces carved into it) It was sooo much smaller than I imagined. Still awesome though. AT first, we watched a small documentary about how it came to be, then watched a Cadet talk about it and give a speech, with about five minutes left, it started to rain. -.-

    We took all our picture and waited for the guy to finished talking before we headed down to the gift shop. I bought a few little presents for my family, and the others bought a couple things too.

    

Mt Rushmore through some flag walk

Mt Rushmore

The next day, we went to a place called Harney Peak, which was an old fire lookout decades ago, and hiked up. But, instead of taking the shorter, easier way up, we took the freaking 11km walk, and it’s wouldn’t have been half bad, had it been a nice, flat, non-uphill walk, but it wasn’t, though, in spite of the aching muscles, rocky terrain and extremely hot sun, (which gave me the worst tan) there were some absolutely amazing views along the way, worth the walk actually.
   

Walking

View!

View from another stage

View from the top!

All of us at the top
Going left to right: Luella (IEC), Kelly, (IEC also Luella's husbamd), Danielle (Past EF exchange student, Luella and Kelly's old exchange student), Carl (Swedish exchange guy), Tina (The other Aussie exchange who came) Myself, Sherri.

 That night, we went to Crazy Horse Mountain, and saw what’s been built so far. It wasn’t much, but still was pretty cool.

Our Horse RIding Tour Guide/Instructor

Everyone behind me

Small break to take a few pictures

 The morning we were going back, we went for a two-hour horse ride! It was super pretty riding through the fields and across some small streams, had to take a small detour towards the end because of two wild buffalo, but we all made it, with only one person falling off.

  Arrived back in Osmond pretty late, so Tina and I stayed the night there, then got up at about 8 or 9 for my host mum to pick us up, and drive to Sioux City so Tina’s host mum and brother could take her back to her place.

And holy mother of Christ, the last thing you want to be doing after hiking 11kms and then horse riding, is sitting in a car for two hours. I didn’t even want to move.

Chao x