Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We left Denver and made sure to drive through Nebraska en route to Rapid City to cross that off the list. We are in South Dakota for my 40th birthday: dreams really do come true. I spent the day wandering around target by myself with a hot coffee before we all went out to eat. The weather in South Dakota was certainly no match for Denver and so we took it pretty easy – as in we stayed inside as much as possible. It did seem necessary though to venture out to see Mount Rushmore since I have no immediate (or distant) plans to return to the Black Hills.

We were staying just under an hour’s drive from Mount Rushmore but it was clear that we were headed in the right direction from almost the minute we left the house. There were so many signs directing us and hyping this place up. The drive was actually quite pretty, as were the surrounding areas, but it’s been overtaken by this incredibly American monument. Mount Rushmore exists almost exclusively to attract tourists to South Dakota and the Black Hills area. It was originally supposed to be more localised heroes – cowboys and native Americans – but they figured it would be a bigger draw to memorialise the presidents. Their plan did work, it seems that there has been entire towns and populations that have supported themselves off of the droves of people that come to check the faces out. We thankfully had the place almost to ourselves, because while it was super cool to see, it wasn’t really something I wanted to have to push and shove my way through a crowd for.

We had hoped to be able to do a little walk around Custer state park, but the weather was miserable, so we decided to just hop over to Crazy Horse – another memorialised leader with their face carved into a rock. This one isn’t complete yet, nor can you get as close, but it was still neat to watch the video, learn a little history and finish up our tour.