South Dakota

Pete had it in his head that the sun would go down on us in South Dakota so we drove the entire width of Wyoming and around 9:00p (with a huge storm to the north of us and just a little light left we pulled into our camp in South Dakota. Even though we had a beautiful campsite, we had some drama. Our matress pump finally gave up the ghost so we had to improvise a bed of towels and lap blankets - luckily the ground was not gravel. We had a jerk of a camp host who walked right into our camp despite the protestations of Mojo and ordered us to put our torches out (there is no fire ban listed in the camp ground at this time) taking away the only light we have to finish setting up. And with only one stake left to finish securing the tent, Pete hit a root. But we got everything together and made dinner and after being in the car for almost 11 hours we went to bed.
We got up very early and broke camp (slowly... like people who drove 10 hours one day and have another 8 hours of driving ahead of them!) And we were off to the Crazy Horse monument. I was here about 10 years ago and am anxious to pull out the pictures when I get home to see what progress has been made since I was last there. It's still an on-going work of sculpture and to get an idea of size - all of the Mount Rushmore sculpture would fit in Crazy Horse's head. The small door opening in the center is tall enough to fit a 10 story building.
The pups were allowed to join us on the viewing porch and someone (actually from Missouri!) was nice enough to take a nice family picture of the four of us.
On to Mount Rushmore, about 18 miles away. It has also been very developed since the last time I was there. Pete loved it. It's pretty awe inspiring and they have done a great job of building up the monument as a whole with a grand plaza leading up to the monument and a big amphitheater at the base of the monument. The artist's studio is still as cool as I remember it, but unfortunatly none of my pictures turned out (showing the model and the monument in the same shot) hopefully when we get Pete's pix back, we'll have one.

Even at Mount Rushmore we can find Baseball - the ice cream shop at the visiters center is called Team Rushmore in honor of the baseball team of drillers who worked on the monument. There were lots of pictures of them playing ball with the giant president heads looking on in the background! Now we head to Omaha, driving the entire width of South Dakota!