Today we drove east across Wyoming, taking in the north-west corner of Nebraska, and then north into South Dakota, towards Mount Rushmore.

First thing to note is that the south-east corner of Wyoming and the north-west corner of Nebraska are rather empty. Having said that, there is a real sense of space and sheer size that brings its own sense of grandeur. In places the landscape is quite lumpy…

In other places you have flat expanses of grassland with buttes in the distance

There are parts where the grasslands spread out over gently rolling terrain…

Then you get back to more rocky bits and buttes…

Some of these buttes are hundreds of feet high and go on for miles. The flat tops and steep sides are really distinctive and impressive at this scale. Think that this was in Nebraska…

On the route up through South Dakota, we found some more hills and there was a nice stopping place and picnic area with a set of cold springs that were gushing a lot of beautifully clear water.

But there were warning signs there, so we didn’t stay too long…

We saw our first proper free-roaming buffalo in the Custer State Park in South Dakota:

Once in South Dakota we headed further north and visited the Crazy Horse mountain. This is a mountain that is being carved into a monument to Crazy Horse. It was started by the sculptors who helped with Mount Rushmore. If you look closely you can see the profile of his head, and the crane etc are on what will be his arm (with a white finger pointing horizontally) and below that they have drawn the outline of the horse’s head in white on the rock face. Clearly a work in progress, but will be impressive when completed.

We continued on to Mount Rushmore. We hadn’t realised that Mount Rushmore is in such an out-of-the-way location. It is approached by a steep and winding road through some impressive landscape – not at all what we expected.

When you actually get to Mt Rushmore, it is quite impressive, but again not in the way we expected. The surrounding museum, viewing areas and walkways are really well done and quite restrained, with no razzmatazz.

The sculpting is really well done…

Overall, the impression that we were left with was a lot more personal than we expected, given the grand scale of the work. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

Finally, on the way out we saw our first wild chipmunk: