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Published: September 16th 2008
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Mt. Rushmore
Yet another National Park sign (and we got a passport stamp). So we headed out of Cody around noon on Friday, September 5. The original plan was to hit Devil's Tower along the way. Unfortunately, we forgot to take into account the time change in which we lost an hour. In addition to being after Labor Day, and National Parks closing at earlier times, we arrived at Devil's Tower after it closed. We did see it from the highway, though. Cody got into a verbal altercation with a nasty female road construction worker, who was not doing her job in Gillette, WY, when he drove slowly past where she was standing with her back turned to us, twiddling her little flag. Apparently she didn't like this, and yelled at our rear bumper "Hey, hey, you can't drive past me!" As we had clearly already passed her, we thought it was unnecessary to point out that we had already driven past her, and we yelled back "Then do your job!" Just after this we got hamburgers and cheese curds for dinner at A&W. After passing through Spearfish, and Sturgis, and Deadwood, we made it to 20 miles outside of Rapid City, to the home of Mt Rushmore and closed campgrounds. We had a
Mt. Rushmore
This is the view from where we parked, because we were too cheap to pay for parking near the Memorial. (This plan worked out fine, while the weather was nice, and then it poured!). bit of trouble finding a place to stay, being about 9:00 at night, so we ended up at another "RV park," which was really just a patch of grass next to the highway (they didn't even have bathrooms). So after our trip into town to use the public restrooms on the main street to brush our teeth at 10:30 at night, we slept in the car. Lucky for us, because it rained that night.
Bright and early the next morning, on Saturday, we headed out to Mt Rushmore. The weather forecast had predicted rain today, so we had initially planned on doing the Wind Caves this day, but the skies were sunny and blue, so we decided to test our luck by doing Mt Rushmore anyway. For informative purposes, Mt Rushmore is one of those places run by the National Park Service, that even though they get federal money, the National Parks Pass doesn't get you in for free, because you have to pay to park. $10. Cash. We didn't know this until we were at the kiosk. Out of principle (because it is a National Monument and we bought the parks pass) we refused to get money out
Mt. Rushmore
Our first look at the men in rock. of the ATM just to pay for parking. So we circled the parking garage and left, parking a half mile down the road so we could walk in (see Hoover Dam for similar occurrence). No skin off their backs, but we felt better. The entrance to Mt Rushmore is really impressive. The faces loom over the flags, almost framed by the trees on either side. The visitor center is really nice, with floor to ceiling windows facing the mountain, and lots of displays and two movies. There is a large building containing Borglum's model of Mt Rushmore, off of which they would take measurements for use on the mountain. As work progressed, and problems with stone arose, Borglum would come back to the studio and rearrange the models to fix it. He did this a number of times, eventually ending up with nine 1/12 scale models. As we left the artist's studio, it began to rain. So we headed into the cafeteria for lunch, which also has floor to ceiling windows to showcase the faces. We had some tasty buffalo chili and a couple of presidential sodas. Cody had Dwight D. Eisenhower Root Beer and Nickey had Martin Van Buren
Mt. Rushmore
A pretty picture in the sunshine, before the clouds came. Strawberry Soda. After lunch, it had quit raining, so we decided to head down to the information center at the entrance to buy postcards and then back to the car for the passport (we forgot it on our way in). So we got to the car, drove up to the entrance, informed them that we just wanted a stamp, and could we please just stop and run in. The lady there very sternly informed us that if we stopped, we would have to pay. So we told her that we would just leave then, thank you very much, and Cody drove away. As soon as he pulled out of view of the kiosk, he slowed (not stopped!) to let Nickey out, and went down the road to park and wait. Once Nickey got back with the passport, we were off to Crazy Horse, as the sky was beginning to clear again.
Once you make that final turn into the drive for Crazy Horse Memorial, WHAM! Crazy Horse is right there. You can't miss it. We were instantly impressed at the sheer size of the memorial. Inside the museum is a great video on how Crazy Horse is being made,
Mt. Rushmore
A bust of the man behind Mt. Rushmore. Gutzon Borglum died before its dedication, and worked with his son Lincoln on the project. including a short history about the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, and his family. There is also a large portion of the museum dedicated to Indians and their culture, art, and heritage. You can visit the original house that Korczak and his family lived in; his wife still lives there. We were very fortunate that we chose Saturday, September 6, to visit Crazy Horse instead of the following day. There are two days a year that the people at Crazy Horse (who work year round) do night blasts, that is, they only blow up the mountain at night twice a year. One of those days is June 23, Korczak's wife's birthday, the other is the day that Crazy Horse was killed and Korczak was born: September 6. As dark rolled around, we grabbed our camp chairs out of the car and set them up on the patio outside, facing Crazy Horse. At 8:30 the laser light show started, which was a combination slide show/movie/laser show. It told about the Indians, and the struggle to carve the mountain, and their hopes for the future. Immediately following the laser show was the night blast. It was especially impressive because, had he been alive, it
Mt. Rushmore
List of EVERYONE, I mean everyone, involved in Mt. Rushmore's creation (janitors, secretaries, accountants, and blasters). would have been Korczak's 100th birthday. After the blast, which was amazing and went all the way up the mountain, crisscrossing back and forth until it reached the top, they served birthday cake to all the visitors. Instead of eating cake, we went back to the KOA that we had appropriated for the night to cook dinner, as it was now 9:00 and we hadn't eaten since lunch. We got in, ate some hot dogs, wrote some blog and went to bed, as it was a cold and rainy night. The next morning, we were headed off for the Badlands, world famous Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, and eventually Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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