Road Trip Day 27, Mount Rushmore

We were up and out of our motel by 7:30 am. South Dakota so far has been long, straight stretches of road along rolling grassy prairies and expansive sky. We saw a few antelope a couple times, just grazing in the fields, but most notable were the hundreds of billboards, often ten or more in a row for the same thing. There was very little traffic, and long stretches of nothing but country for miles on end. At some point, though, we entered "The Badlands," a very interesting section of smooth, rocky, bare land striated with pink and tan sections.
We stopped at a gas station and found some pretty cool sling shots with different animals carved into them. I'm glad I got a souvenir for J.J. here, because our next stop was Wall Drug, "The Biggest Drug Store in the World" and their prices on everything were quite inflated. What a fun place, though - it was more like a mini-mall than just a drug store, with tiny little themed shops throughout. After getting their souvenir smashed pennies, the boys and I skipped through the shopping part to the "Back Yard," sort of a western-style mini theme park with water play area, kiddie rides, a roaring/flashing T-Rex and a huge, saddled Jackalope for picture-taking.
We came upon a young man named Taylor who was in charge of an attraction where you could go mining, sluicing, or digging for polished rocks, gemstones and fossils. The kids were having a hard time agreeing on with activity to do, so Taylor was very gracious to let them do two for the price of one. First they donned hard hats and headlamps and entered a darkened "cave" complete with dripping water sounds. They had so much fun searching for fools gold and rocks that after finding them all, J.J. hid some and they searched again. Then they took their little tin pails over to a big sandbox and dug like little archeologists, sifting the sand to find fossilized plants, shells and teeth. When they were done, they each got a full-color brochure with all the different kinds of stones and fossils pictured so that they could identify what they had found.
We topped off the fun with some ice cream and headed out to Mount Rushmore. As soon as we turned of I-90 to get to the memorial, the Black Hills of South Dakota rose up sharply and we found ourselves surrounded by pine forests. As we drove along, old abandoned gold mines were clearly visible in the sides of the mountain.
We arrived in the afternoon and the kids quickly put together a satisfying meal of chicken, rice and broccoli. They took a short hike and then we sat for about half an hour and tried to sketch the mountain. It really was impressive, although the carvings themselves were smaller (yet higher) than I'd imagined. Sketching them proved to be very challenging, with most of our being a unique "impression" of the noble memorial.
The next stretch of driving took us all the way through South Dakota and into Cody, Wyoming. What we didn't know was that we'd be driving over a very steep mountain pass on a little two-lane road (that was under construction in several places) with twisty, turning switchbacks both up and down. Add to that the late hour, windy conditions and pitch blackness of the night and the fact there were no lights or sign of civilization for miles around, and it all made for some pretty intense travel (including one sick kid who was sound asleep one moment and hurling up his dinner the next). Halfway down the mountain (it was 1 am by then), our little caravan stopped in the middle of the road and we got out, stretched our legs, marveled at the stars and switched drivers. We didn't get to the hotel until 3 am, and by then I was only half-conscious as I stumbled into the bed and slept soundly until 8 o'clock the next morning.