There are lots of scenic drives that you can go along in South Dakota. I am usually not a fan of long drives but the roads in SD are in great shape, there are few cars on the road and the scenery is incredible.

One of my favorite drives was along the Needles Highway. The highway is 14 miles of curving and winding roads located in Custer State Park. The highlight of driving the highway is viewing the incredible rock formations called “needles”. There are also two narrow rock tunnels that you get to drive through along the way which we enjoyed checking out.

The most famous rock formation along the highway is the Needles Eye. I think the reason for the name is pretty self-explanatory. We stopped for a while to take pictures and really enjoyed the views. This was also the most crowded area that we stopped at.

Right by the Needles Eye there are some other interesting rock formations and one of the two rock tunnels.

The tunnel is pretty amazing to see and was a great place for a photo-op. I really liked seeing the cars squeeze through. As you can see, there is only one lane but we never really saw a traffic jam at the tunnel.

Here are a couple of jumping pictures by my favorite (close-up) rock formation along the highway.