South Dakota Part II !!

Tues We took a tour that hit several local attractions. First up, Reptile Gardens, which the owner touts as the largest collection in north America.. at least in the number of types in the collection. In addition to reptiles, they also had prairie dogs.. they had the kewlest enclosure for them. you could look into their pen above or below... Jesscera is demonstrating the "below" method. Makes you wonder who's studying who, us or them ??? And of Course they had crocodiles there. Jesscera is petting a baby in this picture.

Next is Bear Country USA, which is a drive through animal park. Jesscera confesses this was her favorite part of the trip!! We were able to get quite close to the animals, and the macro on the camera did the rest. Here is a picture of 3 bears in a small pond, and a very good shot of a bison... the bison was maybe 15 feet away. Actually makes for a nervous bus ride, there wasn't a fence between us and the bison!!

The really great thing about the tour is we got "VIP" service. At bear country that translates into feeding the baby bears!! There were 8 of them, and while we couldn't' touch them, we could throw at them a mixture of popcorn, marshmallows some sort of feed... I think they liked the marshmallows the best. In this picture, Jesscera is maybe 2feet away from the baby bear.

This last pic at Bear Country isn't a real bear.. they have a bear statute on top of the gift shop. I thought it was great, the way the bear is "peeking" in!
Next Mt. Rushmore, the biggie of South Dakota tourism. Now I've been before, in fact this is probably the 4th? time I've seen it... Jesscera and Jerry liked it. You can see Me and the BooBoo in front of the mt, and then here is a close up from closer spot, not the normal view for mt. Rushmore!

Then Off to crazy horse. Now in prior trips to the Dakotas, I only saw crazy horse from a distance, and very little was done.. ( this would have been middle 90's I think) So this was more interesting to me than Mt Rushmore. It's actually got much more of an emotional wallop. this is the quintessential picture at the site: the statue lined up with the actual mountain. Very interesting!!! Last on the tour Roger ( the bus driver / tour guild, he was a hoot!) drove the bus on iron man road in Custer State park... let me tell you, he is very skilled, that is a very narrow twisty road and I think we scared the Dejesus out of every other driver on the road with us!! LOL More to follow.....