While staying at Mount Rushmore we drove to Rapid City, population 70,000, the second largest city in South Dakota.  The town was founded in 1876 by a group of prospectors who had come to the Black Hills in search of gold and named the town after a spring fed creek which passes through it. We took a 90 minute trolley ride tour which included a visit to Dinosaur Park on a hill overlooking the city.  The park has seven life size concrete dinosaur replicas as well as a spectacular view of Rapid City.

Rapid City is known as the “City of Presidents” because of its proximity to Mount Rushmore but also because of a public art project that resulted in 43 life size bronze presidential statues of all past presidents which are located on street corners downtown.  Using a map to guide us we enjoyed finding the statues.  The figures are displayed in different poses and tries to emphasize a unique part of their personality such as Ronald Reagan wearing a cowboy hat. Rapid City was another small western town we have enjoyed on our travels this year.

Another day we wanted to drive back to Custer State Park to continue exploring the rest of the park. At 71,000 acres, it is one of the nation’s largest state parks. We drove towards the park on the Needles Highway through pine and spruce forests with meadows surrounded by rugged granite mountains. The road gets its name from the many needle like granite formations along the highway. The roadway was planned by former South Dakota governor Peter Norbeck who marked the entire course on foot and horseback. With the aid of 150,000 pounds of dynamite, construction was completed in 1922. We passed through three very narrow tunnels.

The State Game Lodge in Custer State Park was the summer White House for President Calvin Coolidge and was visited by Dwight Eisenhower. A really neat time to visit the park would be the last Friday in September when they do the bison roundup. Some of these bison are auctioned off in November with the money going towards operating costs of the park.

Next we drove to Wind Cave National Park. We had driven through a small section of the park on our way to Mount Rushmore and we wanted to continue to explore more of the park and stop by the Visitors Center.

Wind Cave National Park was established in 1903 and is the eighth national park created. It was the first national park set aside to protect a cave. Wind Cave is one of the world’s longest and most complex caves. Currently there are over 143 miles of twisting passageways under only 1.2 square miles of surface area. Close your eyes and visualize what a maze of tunnels that creates deep below the surface of the land! Portions of Wind Cave are believed to be over 300 million years old, making it one of the oldest caves in the world. Barometric wind studies estimate that only five percent of the total cave has been discovered.

Wind Cave is considered sacred and culturally significant to Native Americans who roamed the area for centuries. You could say it was rediscovered in 1881 by Tom and Jesse Bingham when they heard whistling noises coming from the small entrance to the cave.

We enjoyed touring the Visitors Center where they had a movie and many interesting exhibits about the cave.

As we drove around the park we continued to see buffalo and a lot of prairie dogs. We stopped to watch them and take pictures as they played a game with us of now you see us, now you don’t.  The prairie dogs live in large social groups called towns.  The round mound of dirt that surrounds the prairie dog hole keeps rain water from running into the burrow and serves as an observation post to watch for danger.

Tomorrow we leave Mount Rushmore for the Badlands of South Dakota.

Bill and I had both waited a long time to see Mount Rushmore so the next morning we eagerly made the drive to Mount Rushmore National Park.  While there is no charge to get in, you have to pay $11 to park with the money going to pay for the large parking garage built to accommodate all the tourists. No federal money was used to pay for the garage. The parking pass is good for a year. We were told that the garage will be paid off in 2016 and the trustees will give the garage to the park service.

Mount Rushmore is an amazing place with an Information Center, Visitors Center, three bookstores, a gift shop, sculptor’s studio, two theaters with movies, nature trails and an amphitheater. A Grand View Terrace to view Mount Rushmore is at the end of the Avenue of Flags where flags from all fifty states are displayed. We enjoyed the exhibits and movie and spent time just looking at the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. We had lunch at the cafe there and Bill tried the buffalo chili which he said was good.

Between 1927 and 1941, sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved the memorial with the help of over 400 workers. When Borglum died his son Lincoln Borglum supervised the completion. Work stopped in October, 1941 near the beginning of World War II. It was interesting to read that Gutzon Borglum wanted to build a special place to share important pieces of American history so he planned to build a large room which would be carved into the vertical wall of the canyon behind the faces. This room would be called the Hall of Records and would store important documents like the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Work on the Hall of Records began in 1938 but the U.S. government would not approve funding for the addition and workers were only able to carve a doorway and small hallway before Congress stopped the Hall of Records project.

After leaving Mount Rushmore we drove through part of Black Hills National Forest and Custer State Park along the Iron Mountain Road and the Wildlife Loop Road where we encountered “pigtail curves”. Back in Denver we were excited to see buffalo in the distance behind a fence. Little did we know we would see herds of buffalo here. We saw a lot of buffalo and calves. The buffalo were right by the side of the road and a couple times we had to stop and wait while they crossed the road. The buffalo were shedding their winter coats so they looked especially scruffy.

Today the park is home to as many as 1,450 head of North American bison, also known as buffalo. There were once millions of bison, but by 1900 fewer than 1,000 bison remained on the entire continent. Peter Norbeck, known as the “Father of Custer State Park”, decided to take action to preserve the bison.  In 1914 the park purchased thirty-six bison which grew to 2,500 by the 1940’s. The bison numbers are great enough today to have a roundup each year and some of the bison are auctioned off.

We came across prairie dogs chattering as they popped up from their holes in the ground, deer and a lazy burro.

Later that evening we returned to the Mount Rushmore Amphitheater for the Evening Lighting Ceremony. After watching a patriotic movie the faces on Mount Rushmore were lighted, we sang the National Anthem and the flag was then lowered. They invited all past and current members of the military service to come down to the stage. The stage was full and each person was asked to give their name and rank. Several of them participated in the folding of the flag.

Some facts about Mount Rushmore:

• Each face is 60 feet tall. Each eye is 11 feet wide.
• Washington’s nose is 21 feet long. All the other noses are 20 feet long.
• Washington’s mouth is 18 feet wide.
• Washington’s head is as tall as a six story building.
• Total cost was $989,992.32
• Main tool was dynamite and the drill was the jackhammer.
• The rock is Harney Peak Granite.