Visiting Mount Rushmore, Wildlife Loop, & the BEST burger in the US?! (South Dakota Black Hills)

This week we're exploring South Dakota with South Dakota Tourism to show you all the best hikes, things to do, places to see, and delicious food to eat all across this beautiful and diverse state. Yesterday we visited waterfalls in Spearfish Canyon, ate delicious ice cream, and stepped into the past in historic Deadwood, and today we're going to hopefully see some furry friends, eat one of the best burgers in the U.S., and visit Wind Caves National Park. But first, we are going to see some familiar faces at Mount Rushmore. For those of you not from the United States, the Mount Rushmore National Monument is a sculpture of four U.S. presidents, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson carved into Mount Rushmore. It's one of those iconic U.S. sites that you see in all the textbooks and movies, just photos everywhere, and we've never actually seen it in real life until right now. We just got a sneak peek, and we are so excited to finally be here and see it with our own eyes. The memorial opens at 5, sunrises at 6, so we got here a little bit before sunrise so we could beat the crowds. It's free to enter, but it's $10 to park, but once you park, it's just a short walk up to it. So let's go see some presidents. This is honestly so surreal. It's, it doesn't look real, it just doesn't feel real. This is, I don't know, it's a weird, it's a crazy awesome feeling right now seeing this in real life. Yeah, it's something like you said earlier, you see it all your life in books and stuff. It's just really cool to see it firsthand. I finally feel like a true American. Yeah, for sure. A few interesting facts about Mount Rushmore for you. The profiles are 60 feet tall. It took 400 workers 14 years to complete. They blasted the rock with dynamite and hung from steel cables to use jackhammers to sculpt at the rock. Despite all that, there were no deaths during construction. We had always envisioned that when you come to Mount Rushmore, you just pull up, walk out, look at Mount Rushmore, and then leave. But there's actually a trail you can go on that'll get you a little bit more up close and personal with the presidents. It's very appropriately named the Presidential Trail. So it's 0.6 miles long and it's 422 stairs to get to the end of it. So we're on our way there now. So that's one of the chairs that they used. And then that's the big model that they went off of. So the National Park website said it had 422 steps, but this sign says only 250 steps. So I guess we'll go off of this sign. It's only 250 steps to the top, but that's still a lot of steps. We definitely recommend doing the Presidential Trail from the main viewing area. You can't really tell that Teddy has glasses on. It's so cool. Yeah, you couldn't even tell from over there. So you get up close and personal. You get to see a lot more of the details and kind of like the different like lines and the rock and everything. It's really neat. And as we always say, definitely get here early. We got here before sunrise. Totally worth it. This is probably one of the most famous landmarks in the United States. So I can't even imagine what a madhouse this place gets to be. Here in an hour or two probably. Yeah, we've pretty much had it all to ourselves. I mean there's other people, but tons of like space between people and no crowds or anything. So we're gonna head back to the van and we're gonna continue our little road trip today. We're going through kind of the Black Hills. We're gonna hit up a National Park. We're gonna see another really cool sculpture. We have a lot of fun stuff planned today. Next up on the itinerary for the day is the Wildlife Loop. It's a 14 mile scenic drive through Custer State Park, which we'll be exploring more tomorrow. And as the name implies, this road is a great place if you want the chance to see some wildlife. We hear there's about 1,300 bison in the area. You can see pronghorn, big horn, deer, elk, prairie dogs, and then burros, which is what we're most excited to see because let's just say we hear they're very friendly. We officially made it onto the Wildlife Loop. It costs $20 to enter Custer State Park and to do this drive, but that $20 gets you a pass that works for seven days in all South Dakota State Parks. Been on the road for about five-ish minutes. Probably a couple miles in. So far, zero wildlife. Here bison, bison, bison, bison. Where are you? Update. We see some bison. Finally. And we see some prairie dogs. This drive is really turning around. That was really cool. I don't know what he was doing. He was like rolling on his back. Like Kona does. Yeah, like Kona does. I guess scratching his back or something. But it's not cool enough to just get some shots of them, but then you get some action shots where they're doing something that makes it extra special. Update. We are possibly going to get in a buffalo jam over here. A bison jam. There's a boatload. Holy cow. There's like 50 of them over here. Across the way over here. They're real close to the road. Whoa. Wow. There's hundreds. That's a lot. They're as far as the eye can see. This is absolutely nuts. There are so many. We were like... Oh, here we go. Here we go. They're crossing the road now. They are so close to the car. Some of them are within inches. Never seen so many all in one place. We've been to Yellowstone and a few other like you know wildlife hot spots and we've seen a few and gotten close, but man this is tons of them and they're right there. Like I could seriously like reach out and grab one if I wanted to. I'm not going to. Probably not a good idea, but this is super cool. And it's always been the dream situation to get stuck in like a traffic jam from them where they're all over the road and you have to stop. Wow. Things really turned around. We made it to the end of the wildlife loop and unfortunately we didn't see the burros, but we wanted to tell you guys about them anyway because if you can find them when you're here it would be such a cool experience. They're not native to this area. They were used in the past to take visitors up to Black Elk Peak and then once they discontinued that they basically just let them roam free around the park. And they're nicknamed the begging burros because they're super friendly and they basically just expect food from all the visitors. Don't know for sure if you're supposed to feed them or not. Typically you're never supposed to feed wildlife, but I've read that some park rangers have said it's okay, so I don't know that for sure, so definitely research that before you try to feed them. But they apparently do get fed a lot and that's why they're so friendly and they'll literally come up to your car and stick their head in your window trying to get food from you, which would have been the craziest thing ever. That's what I was most excited about was just seeing if it would put its head in the fan. But we couldn't figure out where they were. We did a lot of googling and we could not find like here's the exact location that the burros normally are, so I'm not sure if they roam around or not. So we didn't get lucky this time, but we saw so many bison, way more than we expected, and that still just made this drive totally worth it. We're now off to Wind Caves National Park, but first we gotta get through this buffalo jam. Man, early morning traffic. Rush hour. Definitely give yourself a little bit more time than you think you need to get places in South Dakota or at least around Custer State Park because the traffic is real bad. But we've officially entered Wind Caves National Park, our 27th National Park. Wow, Wind Caves National Park is our 27th National Park. It's America's 7th National Park. It's actually the densest cave system in the world and the first National Park in the world to be specifically designed to preserve a cave system. And what blows my mind is that they're discovering four new miles of caves every year. Unfortunately, the cave is currently closed now, but we still wanted to visit the National Park, so we found this trail called the Rankin Ridge Trail, which is just a mile loop that takes you to a fire lookout and supposed to have really nice views of the area. We made it to the top. We're standing just under the fire lookout, but according to this board here on a clear day, which today is not very clear, you can see Buffalo Gap, which you can see it over there. It's a dip in the range over there, but then you can also see Badlands National Park. You can barely make it out way out there. It's pretty hazy today, I think because of all the wildfires in California. I think Colorado, there's a bunch of wildfires unfortunately happening right now, so it's definitely a hazier day, but you can still see pretty far. But the views are still incredible. One thing that we're really loving about South Dakota, and it sounds kind of weird, is we love that the grass is kind of like a lighter green, yellowish green, and then contrasting against all the trees. It just looks so dark green. It's just so beautiful. The contrast is cool. It's like the grass has that like that nice soft early morning or late evening like light. Yeah, the golden light all the time. The black hills, man, are so beautiful. They're so rolling, and there's like patches of trees, and patches of grass. It's rocky parts, rocky parts jutting out. It's beautiful. He would ask us like five months ago, what do you think South Dakota looks like? We would have probably just thought it was like plains and like farmland and stuff, but it is incredibly beautiful here. We are loving it so much so far. We have officially conquered Wind Caves National Park, sort of. We didn't get to see the caves at all. We'll have to come back, but boy, we are getting hungry, so we are gonna head to the town of Custer and get some lunch. For lunch, we grabbed takeout from Black Hills Burger and Bun Co, and in 2014, they won Trip Advisor's Best Burger in the Nation, so we are pretty pumped about it. So I got the Black Hills Blues, and it comes with blue cheese crumbles, bacon, garlic aioli, and grilled onions, and you can get your choice of beef or buffalo patty, and I went with the buffalo patty. They also make their buns in-house, and I got the Hot Granny, and I'm not gonna lie, I love the name of this burger, and that's kind of why I picked it, but the ingredients also sound really good. So I got the buffalo patty as well, and then it comes with cream cheese, fresh jalapenos, bacon, and then there's some like sweet and spicy jalapeno sauce on the bottom, and I got a gluten-free bun, which I don't think they, I don't know if they make that in-house or not, but I'm just so excited to have a burger with a bun. It never happens, and they're just so much better with a bun, and then I got sweet potato fries, Adam got regular fries, and we're gonna share. Look how big this bun is. I don't know how I'm gonna eat this successfully. Did you feel this one's nice and pillowy? Yeah, yours looks so good. I'm pretty jealous of this bun. All right. Best burger in 2014. Here we go. Whoa. That meat is so good. That's what I was gonna start with. The meat is super juicy and like soft and very hearty. The bun, my bun's even really soft, even though it's not as good looking as his, and like the sweet spicy sauce, it just like, oh my god, it was like the juiciest thing I've been into in so long. It's so good. Oh my gosh. Yeah, mine's super good. Again, the patty's delicious. The bacon is nice and crispy and crunchy. The blue cheese is, I don't even know how to describe blue cheese. It's like bitter, and the onions are good. They add a little flavor. The garlic aioli. This is delicious, and the bun. Bun is just a freaking pillow. So good. Yeah, this is amazing. I always kind of get nervous going to places that have like won awards, but the reviews were all incredible, so we figured it would at least be a good burger, but I'd say this is a dang good burger. In that bite, I got more of the garlic aioli and just more flavor. I love this choice. Everything about this burger, from like the creaminess of the cheese, the kick of the jalapenos, the sweetness of the sauce, it's just perfect. It is so good. I normally get very basic burgers like mustard, pickles, and lettuce, and I'm just absolutely loving this. It is, oh, it's so good. Trip Advisor, you were not wrong. Our hangar has been extinguished, and we have one more final stop on our South Dakota adventure for the day. Our final stop of the day is the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is something that I've been wanting to see for a while now. It's a memorial to all Native Americans, and Crazy Horse was an Oglala Lakota Native American. He has a fascinating story, and I'm a big podcast fan, and one of my favorites is the History on Fire podcast, and the guy did a three or four part series on Crazy Horse. So if you're interested in that, I would definitely highly recommend. Check that out. So the monument was started in 1948, and when it's completed, it will be the largest mountain carving in the world at 563 feet tall and 641 feet long, but the crazy part is we will probably never see it completed in our lifetime, so this could be the most we ever get to see. It has so much more to go, and we'll show you guys what it's going to look like, but yeah, it's going to be incredible. So this is what it's going to look like when it's completed. This is 1 34th of the size of the final version. What? That thing is spectacular. When we first saw, when I first saw what the Crazy Horse Memorial looked like, I was already impressed with it because it's just like the face is kind of like Mount Rushmore. I had no idea it was going to look like that. I'm so bummed we'll probably not be alive to see it finished because it's so pretty. It cost the two of us $24 to get in, and the really cool part is the entire project is funded by fees from visitors like us. $24 seems a little steep, but you feel good knowing that you're helping them complete the project. And with your general admission, you can't get that close to the monument, so just to set realistic expectations, it's not super close up. You can pay extra to take a bus that'll take you closer to it, then you can pay extra extra and make a nice little donation, and I think you get to take a van ride almost up to the top or to the top. There's also one day a year, first week or weekend in June, where they let people walk up there, so that would have been really cool because I'd love to like get right up on his face. But even with just the viewing platform, it's still really really cool to see. It's been another amazing day here in South Dakota, and we are continuously being blown away by the nature, the wildlife, the views, the history, the monuments. There's just so much here to see. We feel like we've seen so much already, and we're just getting started on this trip, which is super exciting, but that's going to do it for today's adventure. Tomorrow we'll be coming at you from Custer State Park. We're going to do a few hikes, see some awesome views, and we are really pumped. We're pumped, but I'm a little nervous. You'll see why soon. We've been moving around to do this intro, and the spot we picked at the top of the parking garage right over the other side of the camera is the guys. We've been trying the whole time since we got here, like don't look, don't look, don't look, because we always like to see things for the first time like on the vlog. We just ruined it. It looks fake. It's so cool. Yeah, it does. That's pretty cool. You shall not pass.