Mt. Rushmore to Wyoming

That night was the first thunderstorm that we spent in the little guy. We didn’t get much sleep to say the least, I wanted to get to Mt. Rushmore to watch the sun rise. It worked out perfectly because Jason’s phone forgot what time zone we were in and woke us up a hour earlier than we planned.

That extra hour allowed us to get gas and make it to Mt. Rushmore just in time.

Although the monument wasn’t open, the gates were and we were able to drive right in. Since we were there the night before, I thought we would spend an hour at most walking around. Well, that quickly changed. We decided to stick around for a while, checking out all the exhibits of the museum and hitting up the gift shop.

We ended up spending about four hours there, leaving around 11.

 

Instead of walking up to Washington’s head (which you are not allowed to do anymore) we walked up the Presidents Trail. The trail brought us right under the monument (at the base of the crumbled rocks).

 

It was incredible to see the faces change with the lighting and shadows. We later found out that the artist, Gutzon Borglum, who created the monument, sculpted the faces so hat throughout the day, when the light hit it from different angles, each president would continuously show different emotions. 

After our walk to the monument we went to museum. I never thought about how much time was put into the creating of the monument. Planning for every conceivable problem, Borglum spent four years preparing and designing before he began chiseling. It was incredible to read and see the documentation of everything that went on behind the scenes. I would absolutely recommend visiting the monument. It was spectacular!

From the monument we went to see the Crazy Horse Memorial. The memorial is a tribute to Crazy Horse, a leader and hero to the Sioux Indians in the mid 1800’s. Once completed, the memorial will be the largest carving in the world (563 ft tall and 641 ft long). For now, only the head is complete and the arm is currently being carved. It was neat to see at a distance, however, I decided that paying the 10 dollar admission fee to see it closer wasn’t worth it. (It will be when the monument is done). From there we continued on through the Black Hills to Wyoming.

The drive was fascinating. Most of the wilderness had just begun it’s recovery from the largest forest fire the Black Hills had ever seen. The fire took place for 16 days between August and September of 2000.

After passing over a dozen ranches we were finally in Wyoming. We stopped in the city of Gillette to get some maps and visitor info. It really sounded boring but we decided to take a break and visit the local Rock museum. The museum is free and surprisingly really fun. It had a bunch of antiques, guns, rocks, fossils, and a ton of old saddles.

We then got back on the road and drove to the closest Wal-Mart in Sheridan.