Mt. Rushmore

This is the 4th of a series of semi-regular articles chronicling the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took to Wisconsin and back again. The next major stop on our trip was the Black Hills of South Dakota.

After Yellowstone, we drove the next morning into Grand Teton National Park. It was sort of a drive by and the weather was awful, thunder, lightning and hail and we got out of there as quickly as possible. I did get some shots, which I'll probably post later, but it's probably not worthy of a separate post. The other eventful thing that happened there was on our way out, we had to drive slowly around a downed tree that had evidently been hit by lightning probably about 15 minutes prior to us getting there.

The rest of the day was devoted to driving across Wyoming.  You don't realize how big Wyoming is until you're driving across it. I mean, it's just a big rectangle, but it just goes on and on and on. So, we ended up in Rapid City, South Dakota later in the evening. The next morning, Mt. Rushmore was on the agenda.

I've been to Mt. Rushmore previously, as an early teenager, so some of my memories have faded over time. They're in focus again. I have to say, I'm really glad we got an early start to our day and were able to make the entrance gate to the memorial right at 9:00 AM. Had plenty of parking, so we were just able to pull into the huge parking facility and park anywhere we wanted.

There were very few people around at that hour and so we walked the entrance leading up to the memorial. There are pillars on each side with the flags of all of the states of the United States on either side framing the sculpture. It doesn't get more American that this. Once out on the observation area, you have a pretty much unencumbered view and I took lots of shots. I wish there had been some clouds in the sky as I think I would have been able to have some more dramatic shots than the ones I took, which I think are pretty average.

After walking up to the viewing area, we decided to hike the Presidential Trail, which gives you different outlooks of the sculpture. I would highly recommend this trail, no matter what time of day, but the early morning hour that we took it meant that we pretty much had the trail to ourselves. We could linger and observe the sculpture without being interrupted by hordes of visitors that I'm sure walk the trail later in the day.

By the time we got back from the trail back up to the observation deck, it was probably a little bit after 10 in the morning and the observation deck was crowded, very crowded - think Disneyland type of crowds. We walked into the visitors center and walked around in there, then ended up near the entrance and decided that it was time to take our leave and head down to Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park.

All in all, I'm glad we went. And I can't believe how lucky we actually were.  We got there at the perfect time and were able to leave at a good time to avoid the crowds. I can't imagine what the place would be like during the afternoon when the majority of people come to visit any attraction like this. I can't stress this enough.  Come as early as possible.