Today we are going to Mt. Rushmore. We heard that the president is planning to visit the monument in a few weeks so, we are hoping everything will be prefect for our visit.
To get to the monument from where we are staying we have to travel through the town of Keystone SD.
Keystone is a very touristy town with lots of small shops, t shirts, leather good, pizzeria’s, cafe’s and amusement attractions like mini golf, zip lines, alpine slide, a scenic chairlift and outdoor marketplace for handmade goods.
We drove about 10 minutes to national park and walked through the park to several open buildings. The information center, the gift shop and a food market were all open and to our surprise the avenue of the flags and the main viewing area were closed.
It turns out that they were doing some work to prepare for the presidents visit and we picked a bad week to visit. Even the presidential trail was closed. That trail takes you directly under the faces and gives you the closest viewing point.
We picked up a few souvenirs in the gift shop. A magnet for the RV fridge and a 1000 piece puzzle for rainy days.
The girls completed junior park ranger tests and both received junior ranger badges. We spoke with a few rangers and found out that the faces were carved from Granite! I always thought the mountian was closer to sandstone which would have made it much easier to carve but, I was wrong.
After visiting the monument for almost 2 hours, we went into town and found a decent cafe to eat lunch. As lunch was finishing up it grew very dark and rain began to fall.
Puzzle time…..lol
We went back the rig and started working on the new 1000 piece puzzle.
It rained like cats and dogs for the remainder of the day and we even had some sleet come down. Thats the second time we have seen sleet in the past 4 weeks and I’m beginning to wonder what is going on in these small mountain towns.
Summer is supposed to be warm and sunny!
Luke's Journey Across The USA 