Vintage View Vednesday 2007 Needles and Custer State Park

Three weeks ago on Vintage View Vednesday, I gave you pictures of our epic adventure to Montana with my parents in 2007. That post included pictures from our first three days of travel beginning in Illinois and ending in Keystone, South Dakota. 

Last week I showed you some of the pictures of the fourth day of our trip as we visited Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. However, that was only part of the day. We also drove through Custer State Park and the Needles Highway. This is some of our favorite scenery in America and we had a blast that day.

The road winds around through the mountains, taking us by wildlife and showing breathtaking views of Mt. Rushmore and much more.

This man made tunnel reveals Mt. Rushmore at the end. It was quite an engineering feat.

One of the neat things about Custer State Park is feeding the wild donkeys. We had been there before so we came prepared with some extra loaves of bread. One donkey will block the road and the rest will gather around the vehicle and beg for a snack at every open window.

This is the guy stopping traffic. It must have been his turn. He would not even accept a piece of bread when we tried to give it to him. He was committed to his duty.

What happened next was one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed. We literally laughed until we cried. I was driving and my Dad was in the passenger seat with the window down. He was feeding the donkeys through the window and they were jockeying for position and trying to stick their face further in the window than the donkey next to them.

Then Dad dropped a piece of bread and bent over to pick it up.

We missed the picture, but when Dad was bent over looking for the bread on the floor, one of the donkeys put his wet lips on Dad and started nibbling his ear.

Dad sat up and came alive. He was slapping all the donkeys on the nose so fast and so often that they did not know what hit them. He was slapping, they were flinching and we were totally cracking up!

They pull back for a moment.

And then come back for more. So very funny!

These bikers remind me of another hilarious moment.

We pulled into a scenic place to park and my Mother said, "Hey, those are the bikers I ate breakfast with this morning." No one in the van said a word for a moment. We had no idea what she was talking about and had no idea that Mom had eaten breakfast with a bunch of bikers that had been at Sturgis bike rally the week before.

After she noticed our looks of confusion, Mom explained that we had all eaten breakfast with the bikers. Evidently, there had been a group of bikers in the same restaurant where we had eaten breakfast in Keystone that morning.

We still tease her about eating breakfast with bikers and we often threaten to buy her some leather biker mama clothes.

That wraps up our fourth day on the road with my parents in 2007. It was a wonderful day that we love to remember. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Thank you for dropping in.

Davy