Escape from Mt. Rushmore (and, finally, home!)

June 02, 2024

Escape from Mt. Rushmore (and, finally, home!)

We got home yesterday! Yay for our own bed and a refrigerator full of food!

Here are our final stories, before we shut this thing down...

Heading east from Yellowstone, we took the northern route toward Mt. Rushmore. Our audio tour led us through the Black Hills National Forest on the way there, pointing us toward — you guessed it! — some more beautiful waterfalls.

As our altitude decreased, the climate changed and we shed our puffy winter jackets and gloves for sweatshirts and finally even t-shirts. Beautiful day, isn't it?

After checking in to our cute little cabin,

we made our way to Mt. Rushmore. After the natural beauties of Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Sedona, Page, Point Loma, and so many other places around the country, my response to seeing Mt. Rushmore for the first time was... "Huh."

It’s nice and all, but this has been a trip full of wonders.

There was a good trail that led us to different viewing points to see the monument from different angles, so we took it and snapped photos dutifully.

Walking through the museum made viewing the monument a lot more meaningful. It was constructed over 14 years by almost 400 folks, many of whom were miners, skilled at using dynamite and jackhammers. 90% of the “carving” was done using specific amounts of dynamite to blast off just the right amount of the rock.

The figures were first carved as a series of models (which included coats and hands). As the funding ran out and the sculptor (Gutzon Borglum) passed away, his son Lincoln decided to finish off the faces and be done instead of pursuing more funding.

And now, about the title of today’s blog: our adventure escaping from Mt. Rushmore wasn’t quite as dramatic as Cary Grant’s in North by Northwest, but there were a few moments of high stress, which, if exaggerated, might have made a nice car chase scene. The power grid to the park and the surrounding town went out during our visit. It wasn’t such a big deal when we were walking through the forest and enjoying the monument. But when we went to pay our parking fee, the kiosk didn’t work. This was not a National Park Service issue; they don’t charge an entrance fee. It was the third party vendor which charges for parking and runs the gift shop. We earned quite a number of steps and “flights climbed” on our watches chasing down someone to pay so we could leave. Then the gate wouldn’t open when we got to the exit, either. The line in front of us was filled with frustrated people, but no one was behind us… so Ray put it in reverse and headed backward through the parking garage, then turned around and went AGAINST THE DIRECTION OF THE ARROWS to get us to a different exit (Nick Cage could play Ray in the movie). We reported the problem and showed our “paid” ticket to a confused landscape worker, then hotfooted it outta there. In town (which looked a lot like The Dells in miniature), the few restaurants were closed due to the power failure, but a convenience store selling individual beers saved us. We returned to our little cabin in the woods and enjoyed our cold beers and car snacks!

The next day it was back to nature, and we were able to enjoy a beautiful drive through the forest south of Rushmore (still in the Black Hills), with a pleasingly twisty road, one-lane tunnels through the rock, and wooden bridges that you go under, around and then over.

Look closely at this photo of Ray — see what’s through the tunnel? So clever of the civil engineers!

Going to the area? This drive should be on your top ten list.

On to the Badlands, which we toured by means of a nice 40 mile scenic drive twisting through the park.

How strange that this desert environment is just east of the lush Black Hills and embedded in the middle of vast prairie lands!

Many layers of the sedimentary rock here are much softer than at Yellowstone, meaning that the landscape changes more quickly in the Badlands. The erosion leads to interesting rock formations as some layers dissolve while others hold their shape.

New fossils of ancient mammals (think sabertooth tigers, small horses the size of dogs, and lots of swimming creatures from the ages when this area was underwater) are being discovered even today. Visitors are admonished to leave their discoveries in place and alert the paleontologists on staff at the visitors center if they find anything. A sabertooth tiger skull was discovered in 2023 by a 7 year old girl, for instance!

Again, a great drive-through park on the way to somewhere else, unless you’re a dedicated hiker who doesn’t require a lot of shade to enjoy your hikes.

When we got to our hotel in Sioux Falls, look what was on the counter! You know your trip’s been a long one when you see that, I guess!