Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, SD- Tuesday, July 4, 2017

     It's the Fourth of July, Independence Day, and we timed the trip so that we would be here at Mount Rushmore to celebrate it.   We were hoping to see fireworks over the president's heads, but we learned last night that they don't do it anymore.  Still, it was an inspiring place to be on this particular day.   We managed to get up in time for breakfast, but it was not only limited choices, but was also being served in a very cramped area.  However, it got us out by a little after 9:00, and we went straight to Mount Rushmore, only about a mile or so away.  We can see three of the heads from the parking lot of our hotel.  We couldn't swear that Teddy Roosevelt was still there until we went there in person this morning.

     As we were approaching the monument, Anna asked the very appropriate question, "Why did he choose these particular presidents?"  The social studies teacher in Dad was up to the challenge, and he tried to explain the answer briefly, but a much more eloquent answer was offered on a sign in the visitor's center.  It said:

The four American Presidents carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore were chosen by the sculptor [Gutzon Borglum] to commemorate the founding, growth, preservation and development of the United States.  They symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom on which the nation was founded.  George Washington signifies the struggle for independence and the birth of the Republic; Thomas Jefferson the territorial expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln the permanent union of the States and equality for all citizens, and Theodore Roosevelt, the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs and the rights of the common man.

     While we were driving to the monument, Anna said, "Two of them look like they're kissing!" and indeed, since we were approaching from the side, it did look like Roosevelt and Lincoln were getting a little friendly with each other.  We parked the car in the parking ramp, and walked to the monument, stopping at the several bookstores and gift shops that we encountered.   Of course, you can see the heads themselves more than a mile away, but people want a close look at them.  As you approach the monument, you pass under the flags of all the states on the "Avenue of Flags."  Then you get to the main viewing area, where everyone was taking pictures.   We got our pictures taken as a family here, of course.  The visitors center includes a movie narrated by Tom Brokaw that tells about the meaning and construction of the monument.  We viewed various items that were used to make the monument, including many of the models that were used by Borglum to plan the carving.


    Scott ended up spending the most in the gift shop this time.  He was excited to find small state flags for sale, and bought one for all of the remaining states that we will be visiting on this trip.  He already has one for all of the other states he has been too, plus Minnesota which he got at the Mall of America.  He also got a Mount Rushmore t-shirt and a large replica of the monument which will probably end up on his desk at school.   While we were in the gift shop, we saw an old gentleman signing books that he had written.  His name is Nick Clifford.  He is the last of the people who originally worked on the construction of Mount Rushmore, and he is his 96 now.

    We browsed in the gift shops in Keystone last night, but didn't realize that there was another small plaza full of them between our hotel and Mount Rushmore.  It was there that Julie and Anna spotted a barbecue chicken place and suggested it for lunch.  We had a good meal there.  Scott had a buffalo burger made of buffalo meat.  While we were at lunch, we overheard the waitress making suggestions of places to go nearby, and we decided to try some of what she had said. 

     Partly to make up for the long rides in the car, we decided we were going to let the girls try some of the things at a place near our hotel named "Tramway Adventures."  They decided that they didn't want to do the ropes course or the long zip-lines there, but they did want to try the "Alpine slide" there.  This is a luge ride, very much like we had seen in Germany.   It runs in a gully instead of on tracks like the one in Ellicottville.  To get to the top of this one, you have to take a chairlift.  The sleds get to the top when an employ hangs them on the back of the chairs.  Julie and Scott decided to ride the chairlift too, so we all rode up, and looked at the view of Mount Rushmore from the top.  Then the girls took the sleds down and Scott and Julie returned on the chairlift.  It seems like every place is not trying to make extra money by selling photos of you.  We got a little tired of posing for these in Chicago and elsewhere, but we broke down and bought the pictures of us on the chairlift here, partly because it was hard to take them of ourselves here and partly because the picture was "real" and not posed in front of a green screen.

     We then started on a long afternoon drive.  It wasn't part of our original plans for this day, but we were intrigued by what we had heard the waitress say at lunch.  She said you could see buffalo roaming in Custer State Park, just south of where we are.  Julie was excited by that, and we asked the friendly lady at the front desk of the hotel if she knew anymore about it.  She said yes, and gave us some maps to show us where to go.  She apparently is a seasonal worker, and said she had gone on this drive too.  She said she had seen several boroughs and then saw some buffalo.  We weren't quite sure what she meant about the boroughs, but we though maybe she meant prairie dog burrows, and that was a possibility that we were excited about too.

     The drive started on Iron Mountain Road, which is a winding twisting road that climbs the mountain that stands opposite Mount Rushmore.  There are several "pig tail bridges" which help navigate the terrain.  First, the traffic goes under the bridge, then the roads spirals around like a pig tail, and you end up going over the bridge itself.  There are also several one-lane tunnels that are dug through the rock.  Not only are the tunnels very narrow, but they have to serve traffic going both ways and there aren't any lights to tell you when it's your turn to go or any signs explaining who has right-of-way.  Fortunately, the drivers and many motorcyclists that were out today seemed to be patient.  Many were stopping near these tunnels to take photographs of the tunnels themselves.  After passing through one of them, you get a view of Mt. Rushmore that is perfectly framed by the trimmed pine trees.  It had been around 90 degrees for most of the day, but a front moved through while we were on Iron Mountain, and after a short rain, the temperature dropped into the high 60s.

     We then found our way to Custer State Park, where we paid our admission fee and started to look for animals.  We took the "Wildlife Loop" road which is a long, sweeping drive through the park.  We spotted some deer on a distant hill, and looking at the video that Scott took, we think now that they were pronghorns.  Besides them, however, there was a lot of driving and not many animals.  It was  a pretty drive, but we were starting to feel like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves-- "Where are all the buffalo?"  We were probably expecting the animals to be like it was African Lion Safari, but they range over a wide area here, and seeing them is not guaranteed.

     Finally, the drive started to get interesting when we saw a cluster of cars stopped on the road, with a few people getting out of them.  When we got closer, we saw what looked like donkeys or mules wandering up to the cars to see if they could get free handouts.  It was then that Julie first realized what it was that the lady in the hotel had said-- She didn't say "boroughs"; She said they saw several "burros."  Checking the brochure that we got from the park entrances, we learned that the burros are not native to the area, but are the descendants of animals that used to be used in the area.  They are wild now but evidently are used to coming to humans to beg for handouts.  We took a closer look at the burros, and then Julie pulled into a side road to get turned around.  It was there that we spotted something that we found even more exciting.  There was a prairie dog sitting up on its hind legs in the middle of the road.  We stopped to see him, and slowly became aware of the fact that there were many more in the grass around us.  They seemed to appear up out of nowhere, and either stopped to stare at us, or occasionally scurry across the grass to another hole.  We all enjoyed seeing them.  We had been hoping to see prairie dogs ever since we had been in Minnesota, but we hadn't seen any.  (To be accurate, Julie may have spotted one while we were driving a few days ago, but it wasn't in a place where we could stop and watch them so closely like we were doing here and she was the only one who saw it.)  Now that we knew what to look for, we were able to spot two more "towns" and stopped at another one to watch the little guys pop in and out.

     We were almost done with our drive through the Wildlife Loop when we spotted a lone bison, galumphing through the high grass.  We don't know where the rest of the herd was, but we got to stop and see him anyway.   After the Wildlife Loop, we took a portion of road called the Needles Highway.  Anna asked if we would see buffalo on this road, and Julie had just said no, when only a few seconds later Emma said, "There's a buffalo."  Like the one we had seen previously, this one was on his own.  Julie wondered aloud how he got there, away from his herd, and Anna said "He walked!"  We were all in good moods and found that funny and laughed for awhile at the other possibilities.  Like Iron Mountain Road, the Needles Highway was full of twists and turns, and an occasional one lane tunnel carved through the rock.  This road took us to nice views of large granite spires.  It is these tall formations that give the Needles Highway its name.  Originally, these needles were proposed to be used for granite sculptures of Western heroes in order to promote South Dakota tourism, but the sculptor Borglum said they were too weathered to be carved and proposed the heads of the presidents on Mount Rushmore instead. 

     Dinner was at a place called the Ruby House Restaurant.    It is walking distance from our hotel in Keystone, and was a place we had spotted last night.  It is decorated like an Old West saloon, and Scott and Anna had a sarsaparilla to start with.  It's basically a early form of root beer.  After dinner, we rested for a bit in the air-conditioning of the hotel.  It could have been the end of the day then, but Scott talked everyone into trying two more things that he really wanted to see while he was here.  First, we went to the Crazy Horse monument then we went to the “Lighting Ceremony” at Mount Rushmore.  In spite of the fact that everyone was tired, they all played along anyway.

     The Crazy Horse monument is about seventeen miles away from here.   When we arrived, the sun was going down but we could still clearly see the stern face of Crazy Horse.  It has been being built in some way or another since 1939.  The Lakota elders wanted a colossal monument to match the one that was emerging at Mount Rushmore.  They said that they, “would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, also.”   For many years, the project was worked on only by sculptor Korczak Ziollkowski.  He has passed away, but his family and the foundation that they founded still continue the work.  When finished the sculpture will dwarf the work at Mount Rushmore.   He will have an outstretched arm pointing to the sacred land of the Lakota in the Black Hills.  He will be mounted on a horse.  The face of Crazy Horse is done, but you can only see the suggestion of his arm extending over the hole that has been drilled and blasted underneath it.  Enormous earth moving machines are sitting on the arm itself, and the sheer scale of the monument may be best gauged from the size of these.  The horse beneath is only suggested by the outline of a white head painted onto the rock.  We watched a twenty-minute film about the building of the monument, and it gave us a lot of perspective on the project.  Will it ever be finished?  That’s unclear, but if it is Anna and Emma can tell their grandkids that they saw it being constructed.  There is a large museum and a lot of exhibits here about Native American culture, and there was going to be a laser show outside, but Scott wanted to get back to Mount Rushmore if it was at all possible.

     We did get to see white mountain goats.  We saw a pair on the way to Crazy Horse, and one in nearly the same spot on our way back.  The first two were very near to the car, but we passed them before anyone could get pictures.  The second time, Scott got only a white split-second blur in the darkness on the video, but we saw them!

     When we arrived at Mount Rushmore, the lighting ceremony had already started.  The heads were still dark, but far beneath them, a video was being shown.  From where we were walking in on the Avenue of Flags, we couldn’t see the ceremony in progress.  Julie and Emma took a seat on a bench, but Scott and Anna ventured closer.  When the spotlights were turned on and the presidential faces were illuminated, everyone “Ooh”-ed and “Aah”-ed.  Scott and Anna pushed even closer then, and could see that the very end of the video below was showing fireworks.  We had missed most of the presentation, but there was still some meaningful moments left.  The crowd was invited to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and since we couldn’t hear the accompaniment below, if there was any, it sounded to us like it was just the crowd singing on its own in the valley below the illuminated faces.  It was a nice moment.  Past and present members of the armed forces who were in the crowd were invited to come down to help lower and fold the American flag.  It wasn’t the spectacular fireworks that we were hoping for when we scheduled our stop at Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July, but it was a somber and meaningful moment nonetheless. Perhaps that is more fitting in the times we live in now anyway.

     As the crowd began to depart, Emma said, “If we hurry, we can get back to Crazy Horse for the laser show there.”  Mom and Anna both gasped and looked at her in dread.  Emma had to quickly add, “Just kidding!”   In fact it took us a while to get out of the parking lot anyway, and we made our way back to the nearby hotel.