the black hills

we have now been in the black hills of south dakota for two days, and what a beautiful two days they have been, as you can see above. yesterday was mostly filled with driving here from wall (which is only about an hour), getting settled, and getting the oil changed in my car. i have now driven about 2500 miles, crazy as that is. this is a region sacred to several indian tribes and now covered with state and national parks, as well as a huge national forest. we did get to see the crazy horse monument from a distance, but we weren't willing to pay the roughly $30 entrance fee, and i don't even think it really warrants a picture here. try it in about 50 years when they're further along.

we did get a chance to wander around rapid city a little bit, which i was really looking forward to. for those of you who i have not waxed hitchcock at before, his great film 'north by northwest' reaches its climax in rapid city/mount rushmore. in fact, as i learned last night, we are staying at the hotel in which some of the scenes were shot--the alex johnson hotel. it was built in the early 20th century by johnson, a railroad tycoon, to house the people associated with his line, and has since hosted five presidents, among them the two roosevelts.
rapid city (population about 67000) is quite nice! they've hit upon the touristy but not kitschy idea of putting life-size statues of the presidents on the street corners of the downtown. it was fun to run around chasing down our favorite presidents--i found teddy and fdr, while mum got pictures with kennedy and ronny. the nicknames we give presidents really can be quite funny. the picture to the right is of teddy and i--i found this to be particularly appropriate, for not only is he on rushmore, but he is almost single-handedly responsible for setting up the national parks system. AND he was awesome--i just ignore the whole kettle hill thing.

this morning we woke up bright and early, and i do mean bright, and grabbed a quick breakfast at a fantastic local bagel bakery on our way to our first monument/memorial/park: jewel cave national monument. we did the shortest tour, which was the only one that came free with our national park year pass. it was pretty cool--there are over 150 miles of mapped tunnels in the cave, and it is presumed to be the largest on the continent and the second largest in the world. it gets its name, however, from the crystals which cover over 90% of the cave in different forms. it didn't exactly photograph well, but that is it to the left. the short tour was probably enough for us--we aren't big cave people, but i was glad to see one. (wind cave national park is only an hour away).
after the cave we took an indirect route to the main event and one of america's biggest icons: mount rushmore national memorial. we drove down this highway that goes through custer state park, and was built explicitly to exhibit the monument. you go through these tunnels only to emerge with the faces of four presidents unobstructed right in front of you. the other mild wonder the road had were what they called pigtail bridges, which let the road literally do a curly-cue such as the one to the right--you'll just have to take my word that the circle continues to the left of the pic. it was really neat and definitely worth the extra half hour or hour it took us, and also gave us a better taste for the black hills themselves, such as the brief side trip pictured above. it was a nice drive, but chilly--it only got up to about 72 today, and it was only about 60 for our morning up in the hills--rapid city is at a lower elevation. the other quite funny occurrence was that we ran into this mountain goat in the middle of the road. he was just chilling, licking the center yellow stripes as cars slowed down and passed him on both sides. we speculated as to what he was doing--licking the remains of salt on the road? did someone litter? in the end we decided that we were not qualified to question the motivations of mountain goats. then again, i don't know if anyone is. at any rate, he didn't care.
we rolled up to mount rushmore, only to discover that we had to pay for parking--kind of cheap, considering we had bought the year pass, but it had to be done. they have a pretty nice museum and exhibits about how the statue was made--it took 16 years for gutzon borglum to construct it--and even then, he died six months before they ran out of funding and had to stop, leaving his son to carry on after him. he ran into all sorts of troubles--cracks in jefferson's nose and whatnot, but by the end of it he and his 400+ workers were really good at precision dynamite blasting. i suppose that qualifies as a skill. as i was expecting, it was over-run with tourists, but for good reason. i don't know if i have seen any other place where you can appreciate the beauty of both the creations of nature and those of man right next to each other. especially since borglum definitely appreciated the fact that he was merely a blip in time, and that while the people and ideas he was memorializing were worthy of it, they too have or will pass.