The Black Hills

We spent a couple of days camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  We arrived fairly late in the evening. The road to Horsethief Lake winds around Mount Rushmore, giving us a nice sneak peak of the monument for the next day.  We managed to set up camp just before dark-- a real accomplishment for us!

The Huge Tent at Horsethief Lake, SD

Mt. Rushmore on the Fourth of July is a rather busy place.  It can be difficult to take a picture of those four famous heads, plus any additional people you want to include.  Joe managed to find a way, though.

Things that surprised us about Mt. Rushmore:

1) The Orientation:  It looks very panoramic in many photos.  Though huge, it's not as "wide" as you might think.

2) Ice Cream:  The servings are HUGE!  Guess because one of the huge heads is given credit.

3) There are 250 steps on the Presidential Trail.  You go down almost as many as up, so you don't gain much in elevation, but you feel the climb nonetheless.

4) It's unfinished.  John thinks Lincoln appears to be talking on an old-fashioned cell phone.  The scale model in the artist's studio helps to underscore the differences from model to final product. 

After Rushmore, there was still a lot to see and do.  The town of Keystone seems to exist solely for the purpose of separating Rushmore viewers from their cash.  After spending the afternoon amid it all, I came to the realization that spending time in a tourist trap is like trying on swim suits under those bad lights at the store. Eventually you look up and think, "Yikes, is that me?"  Despite that ringing endorsement, we did find a couple of worthy adventures in town. The Alpine Slide was a blast,  both the trip up and the slide down. The food at the top was pretty good, too. And the men folk all yukked it up at the fake gun fight at the Scarlet Garter Saloon.

We washed off the dust of Keystone and consumerism with a dip in the lake. Brr! Uh, I mean refreshing!

The next morning, we managed a quick look at the Crazy Horse memorial, in progress.  

Model of Crazy Horse, and actual memorial in distance

The similarities and differences between the two works are striking.  Dynamite is a huge component of the story of both.  Rushmore was relatively fast (14 years) and Crazy Horse might never be completed.