Day 7: Mount Rushmore & Custer State Park

Wow!  Today made the long haul up here totally worth it.  The Black Hill are beautiful and the weather is amazing!  We left our cabin about 10 this morning and drove up to Mount Rushmore.  I really wasn't sure what to expect.  I think in my head I thought it would be like the Grand Canyon where you drive up, stop, get out and take a few pictures...   Here you pay to park in a very nice parking structure and walk up a flight or two of stairs and then there it is!

 You can kinda see it when you drive in, but not like you can once you walk up to the observation area.

The kids had a blast trying different shots with camera.  Mandy wanted to try and pick Abraham Lincoln's nose...

It's smaller than you think!

Giving George a kiss on the cheek!

Once you get all the way here you feel like you just have to stand there and gaze at it a while!

There is an enormous observation area and below it is an amphitheater...

We didn't stay, but they were having a huge naturalization ceremony at 2:00 today.  Imagine becoming a citizen there!

They have a small museum that explains how they built the monument.  The kids were all interested in the fact that they hung off the mountain using drills and jack hammers.  Amazing that no one died during the construction of it.  There are also scale models that Borglum used as the project went along and they had to adjust the original plan to the mountain and the different techniques they were able to use.  Grace and Mandy's big question was why he chose the four presidents he did.  They explained the these four represent...Founding (George Washington), Growth (Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase), Protection (Teddy Roosevelt-Protecting & Creating National Parks) & Development (Lincoln and his ability to hold a nation together and not let it divide itself).  We always ask the kids if this is a place that they will bring their kids one day, and if so, we make them put money in the donation box...

The guys wanted to to the hike up to the base, but the girls did not.  We stayed and looked around while the guys hiked.  Thomas and Scott got some great pictures...

It's hard to leave, or at least it was for us anyway.  You feel like you've been on a pilgrimage to get there and probably won't do it again, so you just have to keep looking one more time!

We did finally leave and went into Hill City for lunch.  Thomas entertained us all with his engineering abilities...

After lunch we went off to explore Custer State Park.  We drove the Needles Highway, and did some hiking...

This was one of those parks like we did several years ago where its really one lane, but it's two way traffic, so that you are literally about to drive off a cliff whenever you meet another car.  These are not my favorite.  There was a parking area at the Needle's Eye...

So we parked and were going to take our pictures and hike a bit when we saw a large crowd gathered looking into one of the many one way tunnels cut into the rock for the road...

Of course, we had to see what they were all staring at!  A Greyhound bus was about to head into the tunnel...

Once in, he literally had only inches on each side!  The kids had fun watching to see if he was going to get stuck!

Then, we did a little hiking around in the "needles"...

This pic is going on canvas and on a wall somewhere in our home!

All in all it was "landmark" day for the Milder family!  Feels like we checked off a major family milestone and a breathtaking one at that!  Mandy asked this evening how many more landmarks we were going to see on our trip.  She likes landmarks she said!  We have another full day in the Black Hills tomorrow and are taking the train from Hill City to Keystone and back, doing a chuck wagon dinner and some type of wildlife park to see the buffalo!  Busy, busy.  I asked Scott a few minutes ago, over s'mores at our fire pit, if he built in any vacation days into this vacation.  

Blessings from Mount Rushmore,

Leslie