July 20th Mount Rushmore National Monument

We enjoyed a leisurely morning at camp and then packed up a picnic lunch and headed the few miles to Mount Rushmore National Monument. Entrance to the monument is "free" but there is a $10.00 per vehicle parking charge (which means to me that the monument is not free) and National Park Passes are not accepted for parking charges. As we pulled into the park I commented to Leon that I thought the heads would look larger than they did. Even though they are around 60' high the parking lot / monument area are about 800' down the side of the hill from the sculptures so they didn't appear very large to me. Getting into the park was a flipping zoo, we could not believe how many folks were visiting on the same day as us! After parking our TV in the very narrow spaces in the parking garage we went up to the monument to take in the museum, sculpture studio and to walk the pathways which provided good vintage points in which to view the 4 presidents represented in the carvings. We both agreed this monument was very well done with an avenue of flags which represented each of the fifty states with a fantastic view of the sculptures right above them. We spent a couple of hours here, taking in two ranger talks and enjoying the pathways. It would have been better if there were less folks there but this is peak season so the crowds are to be expected. Before leaving the park we purchased a couple of soft serve ice cream cones that were gigantic! We were so full from the ice cream that we didn't even eat our picnic lunch.

As we had lots of daylight left we decided to check out Center Lake campground in Custer Lake State Park to see how many sites would be being vacated the next day so that we could determine if we should attempt to get into this campground or head south a bit to stay in the national park campground at Wind Cave. As we were turning into Custer State Park we experienced an amazing event, their own version of a traffic jam! There were bison (buffalo) everywhere! In the middle of the street, on the sides of the road, just everywhere! There was one huge bull that must not have liked the sound of our diesel engine that "yelled" at Leon! Leon yelled back and the bison yelled at him again before crossing right in front of our TV. Very cool and amazing!! After checking out the campground (lots of sites would be available the next morning) we traveled on Iron Mountain Road through the park which took us through tight tunnels drilled right through the rock hills which were designed to frame the presidential heads on Mount Rushmore. Truly breathtaking! Next we took Needles Highway (in Custer State Park) which was even more scenic than the Iron Mountain Road loop and brought us through rock tunnels so narrow we needed to pull the mirrors in on our TV. We were both very impressed and glad that we had decided to stay in Custer for 3 nights. After we got back to camp we enjoyed dinner and began to pack up as we wanted to insure we secured a campsite in Custer the next morning.