4 attractions, one big day.

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Bighorn is neato.

Steph thinks Bighorn is neato, and she likes her afghan too.

When the alarm went off at 5 this morning (that's 4am PDT) I just didnt want to get up so I reset it for 6. Then steph woke up at 550 and got furious at me for sleeping in! Ok, she wasn't furious, but she did raise her voice a little. Anyhow, we got up at the butt crack of dawn and hit the road. Our plan was to go to Mt Rushmore by way of Devil's tower, and find a place to crash outside of Mt Rushmore. Little did we know that Bighorn state park was en route.

Sheeps!

Bighorn is just a Wyoming state park, but it's spectacular. It starts out at the bottom of very steep and close together red canyon walls. There is a quite fast moving creek just off the road, and the canyon walls seem to go up about a mile (or at least a couple thousand feet). A couple miles into the canyon there is an interpretive center, but it's really just an anchor point for a couple of viewing platforms of where the creek becomes a 200 foot waterfall. The waterfall drops into cliffs barely 20 feet apart, and rushes through below the platforms. Steph and I were still bleary eyed when we got there, but nevertheless made the 1/2 mile trek out to the platforms. There was absolutely no one at the center, and that was fine by us.

I really felt like this view was similiar to one out of an airplane.

The road continued on up through the wyoming mountainside, past more forests and open rangeland, and opened up on a huge plateau at approximately 8000 feet elevation. I stopped the car around a bend due to a 4 point buck, horns still in velvet walking alongside the road. He bounded away when Steph rolled down the window to take a picture, but she was still quite impressed. The plateau continues on through several cattle ranches, and a sheep ranch too. The flock of sheep were all over the road, literally thousands, with a shepherdess standing guard in her chevy pickup. I couldn't help thinking that Dad and Dick could have a really good time hunting up here. At the far edge of the plateau the highway started down a steep grade, but not before giving us an awe inspiring view of the plains below, nearly 4000 feet below.

Click on this picture, then zoom in. Then look on the left side. Yup, there's people up there!

The view from the backside of Devil's Tower

Pressing on a serveral hours after Bighorn brought us to Devil's Tower National Monument. It's an 867 foot igneous rock formation that thrusts phallicly into the sky. The freezing of water around it over the years has caused the rock to form into vertical columns. The Indians call it Bear Mountain because it looks as though a giant bear has carved his claws down it from top to bottom. From the base it we could see several climbing teams scaling the various cracks. I know if JD had been with us, he'd have been scampering in the boulder field, itching to find a route up the side. We took the couple mile walk around the base, admiring it's size and girth from several angles. There are also quite a few good views of the surrounding countryside from the backside of the tower. At my behest Stephanie wore jeans this morning. She let me know about it the entire way around the rock. As we walked around the giant column a plume of smoke started rising in the west. By the time we were driving away it was quite large and the whole area smelled like smoke. I haven't heard the news out here, but it was quite ominous. Before we left the monument however, we had to cross a plains area thick with prairie dogs. Stephanie could not resist jumping out of the car and gallivanting across the countryside to take pictures of whichever one she thought was the cutest. I'm quite sure that she is cuter than any rodent. She begged me to let her take one home (as if she could catch it!), but I reminded her that Sherbert would love such a tasty morsel.

A tasty morselI think the dogs themselves would make good speedbumps. No?Not a time to ponder smores. Mmmmm smores.

After a few more hours of beautiful western freeways we arrived in Rapid City, SD. Rapid City seems to be quite a sizeable city, with a decent downtown, and sprawling suburbs. The route to Rushmore lays through Rapid City, so we invaded. Along the highway to Mount Rushmore is every kind of tourist trap you can imagine. From "lizard gardens" to "mystery spots" to "drive through zoos". It all screams at me, "We want your money! You don't deserve it!" Every time Steph would point one out to me, I felt like a miser, wanting to grumble at the mere idea. The city of Keystone lies at the base of Mt Rushmore and is predominantly hotels and more tourist traps.

Rushmore is apparently free to all, but parking is not. Even our national parks pass didn't get us out of paying $8 to park. Exiting the parking garage leaves you at a nice mall type entryway, with granite columns and a pantheon of state flags flanking the view to the monument. The mountain looks just like it does in pictures, but it is fun to see it in person. We toured the interpretive museum, watched the interpretive movie, and then took the interpretive walk near the base of the monument. The walk was nice, it gave Steph and I a chance to talk about presidential history, and how Jefferson is the best, even though Steph thinks Lincoln is. The walk ends at a flight of about 250 steps that we had to climb back up to get to the main entrance. Steph was really glad she changed into shorts on the way.

Some of this country's greatest brains.

On the drive into Mount Rushmore I noticed that the city of Wall was only about an hour further along the route. Mom had advised me to stop at the Wall Drug, "because it's cool". So I convinced Steph to soldier on and continue the drive into Wall. Wall Drug is a drugstore that started in the Great Depression in Wall, SD. They put up a few billboards on the highway offering free icewater for any and all passersby and and those billboards drove them thousands of customers. Soon they put of roadsigns around the US and then around the world. I guess that really made them successful and the Wall Drug now takes up an entire large city block and draws some 5000 people a day for the free icewater and just to see what the commotion is about. The laws changed in the 70s and they had to take down most of the roadsigns in the US, but in South Dakota there seem to be signs every 1/4 mile or so about Wall Drug. "Free Icewater -Wall Drug" "6 foot tall rabbit -Wall Drug" "Free coffee and doughnuts for veterans -Wall Drug" "Kids bored? -Wall Drug" "Leather footwear -Wall Drug". On and on the signs appear, each one trying to give you a new reason to stop by. So of course we did. It's big, it's kitschy, it's somewhat amusing, and it's an experience that I'm glad we had. We wandered around the gigantic.... well basically drugstore, looking at all the stuff they had for sale, and inspecting the many displays they had up. They have a huge collection of old photographs from the turn of the century. Pictures of Calamity Jane, Old locomotives, many different people's houses, Indians, Cowboys, just lots of old pictures. They also had an animatronic 15 foot tall roaring T-rex. They have a full diner and doughnut shop and ice cream shop. They have a small, but serene chapel in the mall area. It's just zany what they've crammed into there. We ate in the diner, and Stephanie had a buffalo hotdog, which she said was quite tasty. I was proud of her for chomping down on a big old buffalo.Can you believe Steph has never heard of a Jackalope?

We left Wall Drug and went back to the hotel.

That is all.