A Great Day that Turned into a Bad Day - The Cathedral Spires and Needles Highway

We have really enjoyed our time in Custer State Park, and we had another scenic drive and hike planned this morning. With a view this stunning with Mark standing at the trail head, we knew it was going to be a great day.

To get to this trail head, we were up at 6:00 a.m. because there are only a dozen parking spots situated on a horse-shoe curve on the Needles Highway. We got one of those trail head parking places for this very popular trail. Even though our motor home is only 12 miles from here, it was a 30-minute drive down Needles Highway. This little scenic highway is too narrow to get a middle stripe, but it is filled with beautiful views of granite spires along its 15-mile-per-hour curves.

We saw more of those granite rock formations after we got parked and started the Cathedral Spires Trail. Because of their unique beauty the spires are a registered National Natural Landmark. This was an out-and-back trail that is just 1.9 miles long. So this won't take long, right?

It was an uphill hike with beautiful views the entire way. While most people choose to take a level walk around some of the spires along the way, other people just have to climb through them.

When that "other people" hiker reappears out the other side, the "most people" flat-hiker could take a picture of him in the sunlight.

While we have seen the Cathedral Spires from the distance, it was even more fun to hike between them. Denisa is on the trail, with those tall granite spires on both sides of her.

We hiked to the end of the trail, and found the medallion that people completing the hiking challenge will copy.

Then Mark went to work finding spires that he could climb. When there is a gap within a granite spire that allows daylight to shine through, it looks like the eye of a needle. We found a little needle, and Mark climbed half-way up.

He's hard to find in the picture above, so here's a close-up picture of him below the blue sky coming through the eye of the needle.

He climbed up into the rock formation at the very end of the trail, and stood beside the hole in the rock. It's facing right into the rising sun, so you can just see the silhouette.

While Mark was scrambling on rocks, Denisa was content to stay on the ground. She's in the bottom left hand corner of the picture below, enjoying the views around her. She wanders God's wonders quite differently than Mark.

Mark managed to wear a shirt that was the same color as the granite spires. So it's a little tricky to find him in the picture below.

Several early morning hikers came and went while we played at this trail end. Those hikers returned back to their cars on the same trail that they hiked to get here. But Mark could see on his hiking app that another trail leaves from here and connects to Trail #4 that we hiked a couple days ago. We could make this into a lollipop hike--which is a straight hike with a loop at the end. But we had to climb up the rocks to find the beginnings of the connector trail. Denisa is on the right hand side of the picture, starting that climb.

We finally found the remains of the "Old Harney Peak Trail," the connector trail that we were looking for. On this long-forgotten trail, we were scrambling through downed trees and over rocks with only an occasional hint that we were heading in the right direction.

The good news was that we still had great views of the Cathedral Spires, and it was only 0.2 miles of rugged scrambling.

We were soon back on the trail for easier hiking. Then we headed back to the pickup, with just an occasional picture of the wild roses that were beginning to open up.

But Mark noticed another little-used trail on his Alltrails app, so of course we had to check it out. This little trail was called "The Needles Other Eye," but we had a hard time finding any semblance of a trail.

We hiked right towards the tallest spires. These were the ones that we saw rock climbers summiting to the top two days ago.

We made it all the way to the foot of those grand Cathedral Spires, and we even found this "Needles Other Eye." It was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

Have we mentioned what a great day we were having, wandering more of God's wonders?!?

Then Mark found it--the perfect little slice of heaven. It was a tight hallway into the center of the spires.

It brought us into a room formed from granite walls that rose up into rock columns, and it was perfectly carpeted with ferns. 

Of course Mark started scrambling up those spires. We were pretty sure we had hiked up the path that rock climbers use. But they would be looking for the spires with anchors imbedded in the rock to thread their safety ropes. In this little alcove we didn't see any evidence of metal anchors or climbers. We found our own private spot where few people have tread.

Once again, we wandered into God's wonders!

This was a great day! Mark climbed up into the sunlight for the picture above, and then took a picture of Denisa in the shadows among the ferns. These plants only see sunlight a few minutes each day when the sun is directly overhead. What a great place! But then . . . we saw it.

When Mark came down off that ledge, Denisa saw the tick crawling on his rock-colored shirt. We had found our first South Dakota tick! Then we found another on the back of his shirt, and one on the knee of Denisa's jeans. We had planned  to sit and enjoy a snack, but we were ready to get out of our wonderful oasis! We had to go back through that grassy trail, and we knew that ticks are nothing to take lightly. We looked over our clothing when we got back to the pickup, and we hoped we found them all. But no, we would end up finding ten different ticks before the day was over. Our great day had a definite turn towards a bad day when we found those ticks.

With all of our extra hikes and scrambling, we had turned that 1.9-mile fast hike into a 3.9-mile slow hike. We also stretched it into 909-feet in elevation gain, so we got a good work-out. When we got back to the trail head, we saw that all twelve of the parking spots were taken--plus another dozen vehicles were wedged between the rocks and the road. That made this narrow hair-pin turn even narrower. Driving the Needles Highway is not for the faint-hearted. Just a mile down the road we came to a blind curve that turns right into a tunnel.

It's a very narrow one-lane tunnel, and you can't see if anyone is coming from the opposite direction until you commit to that right turn into the tunnel.

As we drove slowly through the tunnel, a red car appeared at the other side. Since we were further in, they had to back up and let us continue. While this road was almost empty at 7:00 this morning, we were seeing lots of traffic by 11:00.

After the tunnel, a small lot opens up that is big enough for a half dozen cars. We managed to get a parking space. We are here to see the famous "Eye of the Needle" on the Needles Highway. While we spotted other eyes on our hike today, we had seen many pictures of THE eye of the needle. But we didn't know exactly where it was. In that little parking lot we saw a big sign with a picture of THE eye, and the sign described it. But it didn't tell us where it was! We asked people walking around the parking lot, and no one knew where it was. We stopped to ask people in their cars that were waiting to go through the tunnel, but no one had seen it yet. We looked for a local that knew where to see THE eye, but locals obviously would never take this route. We asked more than ten people, but no one knew where THE famous eye of the needle was. Oh well, Mark had read about a neat little hike off the northwest corner of this parking area, so we headed that direction.

That's when we found THE eye of the needle! 

By crossing the road and scrambling over some boulders, we were suddenly eye-to-eye with THE eye of the needle, with the blue sky coming through the eye.

We could look down on that little parking area where no one we talked to knew about THE eye of the needle. It was right over their heads the entire time!

This was a great day with great views! We had wandered into another of God's wonders!

But there's more! Once we turned our eyes away from the needle and looked the opposite direction, we saw a puffy white something in the left hand corner of the picture below.

It was a mountain goat climbing on the rocks right below us! What a great day!

He was still wearing his thick winter coat and looking a bit ragged. Balancing on that boulder gave him just enough height to reach those green leaves on the nearby tree.

He continued to eat the leaves and didn't seem to mind our close presence. Mark ran down to the pickup to get the good camera for better pictures. When we left for this little hike we didn't bring our hats or the good camera because we didn't think that we would be gone long. 

We found another mountain goat, and we ended up staying and watching for close to an hour. We found that they would raise up on their back legs to eat the lower leaves on trees.

The second mountain goat was a little less tattered, and didn't seem to mind posing for pictures at such a close range either.

We finally pulled ourselves away from the mountain goats and that great little bunch of boulders at eye level of THE eye of the needle. We took a picture of Denisa standing in front of that informational sign with the eye right over her head. We felt pretty silly that we had asked people where it was while we were standing right under it! What goobers!

We guessed that the makers of that sign didn't think it was necessary to add directions to THE eye for visitors that were standing right under it. This was the view looking up from that sign.

We stayed in the crowded parking lot, watching a few more vehicles coming through the Needle's Eye Tunnel. A pickup filled up the tunnel with little room for error, so it's amazing that we found out that tour buses also come this way.

As we drove back through the tunnel ourselves, we had to smile and think that we had a great day with a phenomenal hike, wonderful animal sightings, and fun drives. 

Then we headed home down the narrow winding Needles Highway. The road is too narrow for lines, with rock walls that prevent drivers from making that road wider.

When we pulled into the campground and unloaded things, we couldn't find our good camera. We just took those pictures of the mountain goats. Where could it be? We looked everywhere possible in the pickup. It just wasn't there. So Mark got back in the pickup and made that winding drive back to the Needle's Eye Tunnel. Had he laid it down somewhere? Was it left on the pickup and fell off on the way back? He retraced our steps, but no luck. It looks like our good camera is gone. So the great pictures we took with our good camera are gone. The pictures in this blog were the ones taken with our cell phone before Mark made the trip back to the pickup to get the good camera. Likewise, we lost the great pictures of the Custer State Park bison, the close-ups of Mount Rushmore, and the climbers at the top of the spires. Some times a great day can suddenly turn into a bad day.