Justin and I tossed ideas for a Fourth of July trip back and forth for a while. We couldn't decide what to do. I didn't really want to take time off work even though the 4th was on a Thursday because I knew I was taking off almost the entire week following for Girls' Camp (post(s) coming soon!). Finally, the Monday before, Justin asked me "What do you think about going to South Dakota?" Why would we go there? Mt. Rushmore!! We both feel like our time in UT is coming to a close and want to take advantage of the (few) things on our list that we haven't gotten around to seeing quite yet. This is probably the closest we will be to Mt. Rushmore so we decided to do it. We're so spontaneous :)
We left around 9am on the 4th of July and drove straight through WY to SD (~10 hours!). The sun was still up when we got to our campground so we set up our tent and drove to Keystone, the tiny town right outside the monument. We picked up some amazing hamburgers for dinner and took them to the "park" with us (most of the monument is a parking garage). Justin climbed up the boulder field at the bottom of the statues that are the result of multiple dynamite blasts. Apparently they had to blast through "soft" rock to get to the carvable granite from which Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt emerged. That is the order in which they served as president but for some reason Lincoln is actually on the far right. This makes Roosevelt's face the least prominent so maybe that's why they're out of order.
That's me in the red shirt!
This walkway is lined with the flags of all 50 states. Pretty cool.
In order of importance (I mean, alphabetical): Arizona
Florida,
And Utah.
They showed a movie about the making of the monument and the four presidents who made the cut (pun intended). The rangers timed it perfectly and as the closing credits came on with "America the Beautiful" playing, spotlights grew brighter and brighter on the monument. Super cool!! Especially on the 4th of July!
Afterward they had all audience members who had served in the armed forces come help them take down the flag. It was a big group! Really cool!
There was a huge crowd so Justin and I decided to walk out on the boardwalk trail leading to some ideal picture taking spots while everyone else fought to get out of the parking lot.
It was so dark up there and kind of hard to get anything better than this. We didn't have to wait long to get out of the parking lot though and thankfully avoided a lot of traffic on the way back to our tent. The road back over the mountain to our campsite was pretty crazy. Check these out:
You drive over this bridge and then into a tight almost 360 degree turn.
And there were tunnels like this all over the place in the Black Hills.
To be continued...
