Thu, Jun 11th, 2009
Since we could not see Rushmore lit by the night, we were hoping to at least have a decent day time visit, but the forecast didn’t bode well. It was supposed to start cloudy but turn rainy pretty soon. We left very early and reached there by 9 am. There were already big crowds and parking was a bit of fight. No sooner had we gotten closer to the monument ( a bit of a walk from parking), it started to drizzle again. In that wet weather, we joined a ranger walk on the Presidential trail around the base of the mountain. From the trail, we get closer looks of the carvings than from the Grand Terrace viewing platform. The ranger talk was interesting too. From there, we walked to the Sculptor’s studio and saw the model which was used for the carving. I found the ranger talk here even more fascinating than the one on the Presidential trail. This talked about how the actual building of the monument happened – the people involved, the difficulties faced, the tools and equipment used etc. We must have spent about 3 hours at the monument.
From there we drove to Custer State Park. I had read a lot of good things about this one. But by now the rain had picked up and we didn’t get out at an vista points on the Iron mountain scenic drive. The scenery was breath taking and the clouds and fog made it more dramatic, but the rain made it hard to take pictures or record. After almost 2 hours of aimless driving (1 hour was supposed to be a wildlife viewing loop, but the only animals we saw were donkeys and even they were huddled under trees taking shelter from the rain), we stopped at the Blue Bell lodge for lunch. Only vegetarian item on the menu was garden burger. After lunch, we did the Needles Highway scenic drive and that was pretty good. The various rock formations are pretty astonishing. It ends in the Sylvan lake area and this was truly very beautiful. I would have loved to spend a night there in the cabins.
From here we drove to Jewel Cave National Monument. As luck would have it, they were sold out for the day for the cave tours (this is why I like to my detailed planning rather than spontaneous jaunts). Tomorrow was not an option, since we were leaving today. After getting over the disappointment, we just saw the displays and watched the video at the visitor center and left.
From here, it was ~100 miles to Gillette, WY. It took us about 2 hours to reach our hotel here. Since yesterday, PK has been fretting about the weather. Mainly because we may not be able to camp after all, if the weather continues like this.
Miles driven today:
States : SD, WY
