We didn't drive far today, but instead spent some time touring Mt. Rushmore and then the Badlands. Both Mark and I had been to these sites as kids and we were especially curious to see what the changes to Mt. Rushmore had been since the 70's.
The minute we drove up, we could see that Mt. Rushmore had indeed changed drastically. We paid the $10 parking fee and went into one of the two multi-level parking garages. As we walked up towards the carvings, we passed through huge stone portals that obscured the view of the carvings as you walk up the avenue leading to the main viewing platform. Beyond the platform there is an amphitheater that seats 2500 that is right underneath the statues. The carvings seemed smaller than I remember them, but on the other hand, when I visited them before, there wasn't a 2500 seat amphitheater in front of it - maybe the carvings have been dwarfed by it. I'm sure they needed to add facilities to handle the large number of visitors each year, but it appeared that what they did took more away from the monument than it added to it.
Next was the Badlands. Whereas the first part of our trip included lots of pictures of steamy water, today I took a lot of pictures of colorful dirt.
The colors and landforms of the badlands reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon. Around every turn there were new, interesting shapes. The entire area was blooming with Yellow Sweet Clover, and the smell reminded us of honey! The visitor's center was the best one we've seen on the trip. It explained that erosion had caused the interesting landforms, and that this erosion had happened over millions of years. We also read that the altitude sign put up in the 1950's has had a foot of soil eroded from beneath it since then. Hmmmm.
We are staying in Wall, South Dakota - home to Wall Drugs. Wall, SD has 818 residents, and at least 818 billboards urging visitors to stop by for a free glass of water or a .05 cent cup of coffee. It was really a trip - I can't possibly describe it - it had everything: A bookstore, pharmacy, rock shop, leather shop, toy shop, cafe, miniature Mt. Rushmore, giant dinosaur, souvenirs of every sort, and odd display windows. The windows, oddly, displayed western scenes in which all the characters were real stuffed animals dressed in western clothes. Just a little odd. A bit creepy.
Off to bed. We have two more long days of driving and then we're home!
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