Mount Rushmore

Friday…We attended our “Reduce the camping fee” presentation this morning and, no, we did not succumb to all the reasons why we should buy into the Midwest Outdoor Resorts family. By attending the presentation, we did receive a free gift…two tickets to the Fort Hays “Dances with Wolves” film set and dinner show. WOW! OK, OK, free is good and a free dinner show is even gooder! After the presentation, we decided to go sightseeing but the weather didn’t cooperate. The fog/low clouds were at ground level and visibility was less than 100 yards. We chugged down the highway 3.9 miles to Fort Hays at 30 to 40 MPH to pick up our dinner and show tickets. We then decided to forget the sightseeing and get our asses off the highway before some damn fool driving at highway speeds decided to reconstruct our full-size Ford Explorer into a sub-compact model. Thanks to our almost-new Garmin nuvi 760 GPS machine, we managed to find our way back to the Rushmore Shadows Resort. After buying a newspaper and playing with an almost-tame cottontail,

we returned home and kicked back for the afternoon.

Saturday…It drizzled all night so we slept in. Pretty soon, it got light…VERY light! We looked out and it was almost perfectly clear. Time for sightseeing. We quickly looked at the maps and decided to head northwest and do a circle tour of Sturgis, Deadwood, Lead (pronounced “leed”) and Spearfish. At Sturgis, we went by the local Harley-Davidson dealer, the center of “Bike Week” every year in August where over 500,000 Harley’s visit for what is now a two-week event. In Deadwood, we visited the Mount Moriah Cemetery, the eternal resting place of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickock and Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary. We had great roast turkey dinners at a local inn for $5.99 each. We also saw a live turkey on the trip to Deadwood. Since Deadwood legalized gambling several years ago, there were a few “one-arm bandits” inside the restaurant. Claudia reduced her previous winnings by $21. We then headed for Spearfish via the Spearfish Canyon Scenic By-way, making two stops…one at Bridal Veil Falls and the other at a Dairy Queen where I had a delicious Oreo Blizzard and Claudia had a brownie fudge sundae in a waffle cone. It was necessary to keep our blood sugar levels within acceptable limits. We then returned home just ahead of a heavy wind and rain squall to await an all-day bus tour of the Mount Rushmore area tomorrow morning.

Sunday…We were up at the ungodly hour of 6:45 to go to a pancake breakfast before the bus tour. The breakfast fare was biscuits and gravy, pancakes, hickory sausage and coffee. All delicious! We got on the bus and headed out for a 120-mile circle tour of the Black Hills. We went by Old MacDonalds Farm and saw this…

Continuing on, we headed for Mount Rushmore which fulfilled all expectations and then some. It was awesome!

After Rushmore, we cruised through Custer State Park, stopping for a bison stew and chocolate ice cream cone lunch at the State Game Lodge. After lunch, we continued through a VERY narrow and winding scenic road through some narrow tunnels and one VERY narrow tunnel with 1½” clearance on each side of the bus. We were ready to get out the grease.

Several motorists on the other side of the tunnel got out of their cars and were taking pictures of the bus going through. We made it through without as much as a scratch. Going through Keystone, a cute old western town, we headed for Crazy Horse where a family is building a massive granite sculpture of Crazy Horse riding a horse. They claim it’s for the Native Americans, but we got the idea it was a total rip-off…interesting, but still a rip-off. We then headed for home and the end of the tour, slowing on the way to watch several really cute black bear cubs romping on grass and climbing trees at a tourist attraction called Bear Country USA. A great day!

Tomorrow, we start a two-day drive to Kellogg, Iowa to meet Linda and Larry Slycord for four or five days. Until later…