Black Hills & Thunder Basin

After weaving my Corolla through a sea of motorcycles at the gas station, I was on my way to the Black Hills. Since it was the day before Sturgis, I decided to skip the early morning stroll through Wall Drug (as interesting and fun as it is...) AND I decided to bypass Mount Rushmore and take the truck route through Custer State Park...

Back in the land of evergreen trees...

There are a lot of things that I enjoy about deciduous trees, but I really do love evergreens...

 Red Squirrel

He loves evergreens as much as I do, apparently...

Custer State Park...

Welcome to Wyoming

Almost every time I drive through this part of Wyoming I see these weird flashes of light...out in the middle of nowhere... Seriously.  I'm sure they are alien spaceships or governmental experiments... 

Ok... they are probably lightning...

Anyway, the first time I saw these mysterious lights, imagine my surprise as I checked the map and discovered that the lights were always hovering over Thunder Basin National Grassland... 

Thunder... Lightning... moving on.

So this time I decided to take the road through Thunder Basin. It is about 100 miles of mostly straight road of nothing but grass...

The occasional oil drill pops up...

As well as the occasional cattle...

And then I happened upon this...

I told you it was governmental experiments!

Ok...it was a mining company.

 Thunder Basin Mining Company

The other highlight of the day? My first view of the Rocky Mountains!

To be continued...