Today was a fabulous day - definitely the highlight of the trip so far, and the thing that I'd been looking forward to the most - visiting Mount Rushmore!
Lauren and I woke up early - around 6 a.m. I had been expecting to sleep late, since I woke up at 5:20 yesterday morning, but my internal clock must be off! Lauren and I laid in bed and read books until Stuart woke up.
We got ready and checked out of our motel - we had a really good experience and would recommend that motel to anyone! Anyhow, it didn't have a breakfast, so we snacked in the car on the way to Keystone/Mt. Rushmore. The path to Mount Rushmore took us back through the area we'd gone through yesterday. We were so excited to see buffalo as we went past Wind Cave area - first we saw a herd of them, quite a ways from the road. We stopped and took some pictures, then went a little further and saw 2 right beside the road -about 8 feet away from us! Of course, Lauren and I were squealing and excited about being so close - I don't know why it seems so different than seeing a buffalo in a pen.
So the next big exciting thing is that we saw the Crazy Horse Monument - I'm going to attach pictures of that, too. You can see the white chalk outline of where the horse's head is going to be.
On the path closer to Rushmore, we saw 2 mountain goats, one older one and one little kid. The path near Rushmore is incredibly windy and felt like the road up Pike's Peak. The park rangers were thinning trees (apparently, that's our guess, anyhow). There are small piles of brush everywhere, shaped like cones.
We couldn't see the carved part of Rushmore until we were right at it. We unloaded and walked to the monument. It's hard to explain the experience of walking up to Mount Rushmore - all of the state flags lining the path and the stone arches. After we took some photos and walked to the main pavilion, we went back to the cafe and got Lauren some food, since she was feeling a little sick. Then we went back and walked the path up under the carvings - that was an amazing experience. Lauren kept saying that she could see up the Presidents' noses - the path takes you closer to the monuments and closer to the pieces of rock that were sheared off during the carving process.
We talked to a Native American park ranger about using buffalo parts/tipis at a large ranger exhibit area beside the hiking path. We got to touch a fresh (stinky!) buffalo hide that was stretched out to cure in a traditional method. Lauren got to touch buffalo bladders to be used as a water canteen, and to use buffalo vertebrae in a buffalo-hide bowl to grind prairie turnips.
Before we left, we visited the crazy-busy gift shop. We got Lauren a Mt. Rushmore shirt, and she chose a few souvenirs to buy on her own - a stuffed animal buffalo and a small sterling silver horse necklace, and some postcards to send to friends & family.
On the way back down the mountain from Mt. Rushmore, we stopped and climbed down to Horsethief Lake - we fed fish small pieces of corn that we found on the dock and watched a girl jump off one of the high rocks.
Then we drove on to Rapid City. We went through the city of Custer, and if we ever take this vacation again, that's the city where I want to stay! On the outskirts of Rapid City is Reptile Gardens, so we stopped there before we went to our hotel. That was a perfect match for Lauren - we got to see an alligator/crocodile show and also a snake show. The presenter brought out a cobra in that one and it kept striking at him, which made me nervous, but I guess that's kind of the point of it! In the crocodile show, he sat on the croc's back and held it's mouth open and then closed. The crocodile kept trying to walk away with the man on his back. When it was feeding time, he brought out a bucket with chicken pieces in it. The crocs responded a little more enthusiastically than usual, apparently, and he kind of got backed into a corner for a little bit. Glad that's not my job! We got to see about 500 snakes and Lauren got to pet a tortoise that is 129 years old!
After Reptile Garden, we headed to our hotel in Rapid City. It's right next to a Chili's, so we walked next door for a nice sit-down dinner, which was a refreshing change from fast food. :)
We are taking it easy tonight and I think that we are going to head for Estes Park tomorrow. We had planned on staying in this area another day, but we hadn't anticipated how carsick the roads would make Lauren and me. So I think we're going to go to Jewel Cave on the way to Colorado tomorrow, and wind up in Estes Park by the evening. I've never been in that area before, so I'm excited to go explore there, too!
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