Black Hills Corvette Classic Road Trip
- Web-site Owner Adams
- Aug 12, 2007
- Series: Travel
This is Mount Rushmore.
Eight Central Arkansas Corvette Club members struck out Saturday, July 14, 2007 on what was to be one of the best Corvette road trips ever; Paul & Barbara Adams, Carter &Margaret Davis and Margaret's son Rusty, Bobby & Toni Manson and Dan Tucker. With great friends like these, great sight seeing and fantastic Corvette roads in the Black Hills, what else could you ask for?
I will not bore you with an hour by hour or mile by mile description of this trip but only hit the height points, and there were plenty of them. If you have ever thought you might like to do a road trip with some other Corvette owners, this is one I would recommend. We did not want to drive more than 500 miles each day and we wanted a few extra days for sightseeing in the Black Hills so we planned on the trip taking 10 days from Little Rock Arkansas and back. The first three days were spent on the road just getting to the Black Hills in South Dakota.
The first day we landed in Kansas City Kansas and had a good night sleep. After breakfast the next morning we headed north through Missouri into Iowa where we stopped at the Lewis and Clark Monument (museum) in Council Bluffs for a bit of History. We learned all about the epic journey of the explorers Lewis and Clark on route west to Oregon in 1804. We then continued north into South Dakota and landed in Sioux Falls for the night.
Wanting to make a few stops heading across South Dakota, we got an early start and made the Corn Palace our first stop. Barb said hi to a few relatives living near Mitchell. They would not have forgiven her if she was that close without saying "hi". The next stop was the famous Badlands National Park. I had to show you Dan's gorgeous 1966 Corvette Show Car "The Rose". This was the shake down cruise for Dan's new motor and 5 speed transmition. By the way, he won 2nd place at the show in Spearfish that Friday with only 6 points between 1st and 3rd.
Of course we had to stop at the Wall Drug store in Wall, SD. We enjoyed some ice cream and root bear floats then headed for the chalet. See, we rented a 5 bedroom chalet in Lead, SD just south of Spearfish. We needed the 5 bedrooms because Harold Holman of C5 Creations and his wife Sharon joined us on the trip in Sioux Falls coming in from Delaware. I do not think we could have picked a better group to spend that much time with and I think we all enjoyed ourselves very much.
We spent the next 5 days touring what may be some of the most beautiful countryside all through the Black Hills and in a Corvette no less and here are just a few of those trips. This first one was of as you might guess to see the Great Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. The 385 highway down to that part of the Black Hills Nat'l Forrest was breathtaking and the Corvettes just made it that much better. The Crazy Horse Memorial was something to see and it looks like it will be 10 to 20 years to finish it. When it is done, I think they said it would be 5 times bigger that Mount Rushmore. We drove on some very special roads in Custer State Park and had dinner at "The Rushmore View Restaurant". At dinner, all our friends wanted to know how I knew you could see Mount Rushmore from this restaurant. After dinner I just pointed to the name on the sign. We visited Mount Rushmore that evening under the lights. Bard was my deer spotter on the long way home and we counted 11 deer with some big bucks among them.
The show was on Friday evening so we all spent that day washing our Corvettes. Jeff Montgomery of Mena Arkansas got 1st and as I said earlier, Dan Tucker and his 66 took 2nd place and we all had a great time looking over all the Vettes (around 500) and getting ideas for upgrades. I did some marketing by passing out flyers to my new web-site, Corvetteam.com. The next day we were all invited to do a special guided trip through Custer State Park with the Rapid City Corvette Club and Bill & Clare was our host for the trip. We drove on the "Iron Mountain Road" that had about 3 or 4 tunnels strait through solid rock and one of our people took pictures as we came through. On the way back to Spearfish that afternoon to attend the awards meeting, Glen & Barbara, with that club, took us through Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway so we could stop at Spearfish Falls. That sure was a beautiful place so we all took pictures.
The next day was Sunday and time for some of us to head home while some headed to Yellowstone and Colorado for Vettes on The Rockies and more fun. Dan Tucker ended up in Alamogordo NM where the F17 stealth Fighter is based to visit his cousin and some very special Jets at some air base out there. Check back soon for some great road pictures in our new Gallery. We may even have some pictures of Dan's Corvette and those special jets.
"The rest of the story Part I" to come with pictures of Yellowstone.
"The rest of the story Part II" to come with pictures of some Jets, maybe!