Day 8: God Bless America! Oh, Give Me a Home…

---

Day 8: Independence Day! Latitude 43.71, Longitude-103.40, 81 degrees and sunny, barely a cloud in the sky.

What a Fourth! We visited the Crazy Horse Memorial to start the day. This is an amazing monument. All of the presidents of Mt. Rushmore can fit inside the head of Crazy Horse. We plan on returning for the Laser show tomorrow night and possibly witness some blasting of the sculpture on Monday if the weather holds. As we were leaving the parking lot Alec spotted an Alaska license plate two cars away from us; one to go.

After spending some time acquainting ourselves with Native American history we made our way over to Mt. Rushmore. Pulling into our space in the garage, Eagle Eye Alec spotted the rare Hawaii license plate in the next row. 50 States, DC, and four Candaian provinces in one week. We realized that the RI plate on our rental, we affectionately call Silver Sally, make us a valuable find to others in this part of the country.

At Rushmore we took the Presidential Trail to get a good close up look. Many photo ops at Mt. Rushmore you can see for yourself below. However, the funniest thing at Rushmore was asking a couple from Wyoming to take our picture in front of the monument. They got a great picture of us in front of the trees. Good thing we checked, we then asked a younger couple who produced a couple of the images below.

As we re-entered Custer State Park to rest up at the cabin before fireworks tonight we were delayed for about a half hour by the herd of several hundred buffalo using the road.

Tracey took a nap, Luc took a walk, and Alec and I watched Jeopardy. I was able to get some signal for a half hour and took advantage of it. We then loaded into Silver Sally and headed into the town of Custer, population 1000. We got some supplies at Lynn's Dakotamart and tailgated right there next to one guy from San Francisco and another family from Louisiana. We know this because we kept asking people if we were in a good viewing location for the fireworks. However, we kept coming across people from anywhere but here. The town of Custer did not disappoint and delivered a first class fireworks display. We tailgated with our makeshift supplies from the Dakotamart of ham, carrots, hummus, fruit salad, and chips.

---