South Dakota Road Trip: Custer State Park

Mr X and I decided to do a hike in Custer State Park to better get a feel for the place. I picked out the hike for it. I settled on a hike to the highest peak in all of South Dakota. It's not very high: 7,242 feet. Our home in Colorado is at a higher elevation than that. But I thought  it would be fun to be able to say that we've climbed the highest peak in South Dakota anyway. 

So off we went. 

We saw lovely flowers along the way...

There were these rock formations called "cathedral spires" that were really striking.

We made it to the top in great time and had a picnic lunch there in this tiny bit of grassy area amongst the rocks. The view was wonderful. We'd finished our lunch and were scrambling about the rocks taking photos and such when we heard the thunder start rolling. That was our cue to head back down so off we went.

It was a great hike - my favorite excursion of our trip, actually. According to the maps we had it was supposed to take about 4-5 hours to complete. I think those estimate must have been very generous because we did it in 3 hours, not including our lunch break.