We woke up and
hit the road; we had a long drive and no time to spare. It was once again a
driving day so not too interesting, which is why I combined these two days. We
are driving from Yellowstone to Mt.Rushmore in South Dakota, over all about a 10
hour drive, and at least and hour of that was just driving out of Yellowstone
to show how big it is. We ended up driving more than 300 hundred miles just in
Yellowstone Park.
So we drove all day, actually
correction David drove all day, he drove the whole 10-hour trip. In my defense
I offered several times and he said no, he enjoys driving and I don’t so it
works out well. We have learned how to listen to audio books, so we are
listening to Black Beauty. We drove
through a lot of small towns, one of them was named Cody after Buffalo Bill
Cody, It looked like a fun little town. Other then that our day was filled with
driving many miles on long roads and past open fields. We got to the town of
Custer, which is this cute little town near Mt. Rushmore where we were camping.
We got to our camp ground and it was probably one of the nicest camp ground we
had been to, it was run by an older gentleman and it was obvious that this
little place was very important to him. That night we took it easy, cooked dinner
(instant mashed potatoes and can veggies). The rest of the night we read, and
sat by the fire drinking hot chocolate. We went to sleep early so we could have
a full day the next day.
The next day we woke up ate some
oatmeal and head straight for the national monument. We pulled up to the park
thinking our park pass would cover the parking fee but it didn’t unfortunately
so we paid 11$ to park, but it is a pass for the whole year so at least you can
go back every day haha. As soon as you walk up the stairs from the parking
garage, the four faces are right there high in the sky. I have always seen
pictures of Mt.Rushmore but it is completely different in person, just
mesmerizing. I just couldn’t believe how real they looked. It is a really nice
monument; there is a lot to do. We walked down the walk of flags, which is a
flag from every state and the date the entered into the union of the United
States. We walked the president’s trail, which gives the information about each
of the four presidents from the best view of the each of them on the trail. We
stopped by the sculptors studio and museum to learn about the process to create
the monument, Just a few facts;
90% of the monument was sculpted by dynamite, it took about 400 workers and hardly any of them were
sculptors. It took around a million to make, and the sculptor died just before
the last face was finished, he also sculpted the mural on Stone Mountain,
GA. After we left the monument we
had to decide what to do next. There is a lot to do in the black hills area. We
went to Custer state park, which is the largest state park in the U.S., it was
really pretty, there was some really cool rock figures, more bison, some rock
tunnels to drive through and pretty drives. We spent a few hours in the park
and then headed over to learn about the crazy horse monument. We decided not
pay to go see it, but it is going to be the biggest stone carved monument in
the world, when/if they finish it. It has been in the process of being built
for some decades now, the sculptor has already died and it is not even ¼ finished.
Hopefully we can see it done in the future. After that we drove around Custer
to see all of the little touristy areas and then headed back to camp to have a
relaxing evening,
No comments:
Post a Comment