Mt Rushmore, S.D.

We're here! Yesterday we drove a few hours and stopped along the way at the Minuteman Missle National Historical Site . This was a very sobering experience. At the height of the cold war, there were over 1000 underground missle silos in the prarie fields of North and South Dakota, as well as in Nebraska and Iowa. Each one housed a missle with a 1 megaton warhead (equiv to 1,000,000 tons of TNT). After the nuclear disarmament treaty in the '90s about 1/2 of these were destroyed, but the remainder are still in service and have actually been upgraded. We were silent for about 20 minutes as we drove down the highway after this side trip.

We booked a campsite very close to Mt Rushmore (American Buffalo Resort), parked the motorhome because it was too early to check in and drove the 15 minute trip to the monument. You can actually view it from the road, but we sprung for the $10 parking fee to park in their ultra modern garage,and visitor center. Still, you don't get in the monument or on it, you stand on a very large modern stone viewing area at the base of the mountain about 1000 ft away. It was very impressive, but after about 10 minutes you start looking for the gift shop.

All the way out we saw signs for the Gutzon Borglum (the guy who carved  Mt Rushmore) information center and movie (Borglum Historical Center), but when we got there it was closed. They're only open Tuesday through Friday.....WTF?

We headed back to the campground to put the motorhome in its designated space, since we had arrived too early to check in. Very nice heavily wooded site on a mountain. We put up the satellite dish and were surprised to get reception in the midst of all the tall trees. We mixed up a batch of drinks and made a batch of crabbies.

That was our dinner.

Today I think we're going to drive the Custer State Park scenic loop, where we'll likely see wildlife like buffalo, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, etc. I think we'll remain in this campground for the next couple days.