South Dakota

 In this one week, I have gone to two states that I have never been to before. The first is obviously Nebraska, and the second one is South Dakota.

The interns took a five-day trip to Black Hills, starting on Monday and ending today. Here's what we did:

On Monday morning, we loaded up and began driving from Fremont, Nebraska to Horsethief Lake in South Dakota. We stopped at a couple of neat places, including a pizza place with a really good dessert pizza called cactus bread and Wall Drug, this huge tourist trap attraction in Wall, South Dakota. (I got some stickers and magnets and stuff like that from Wall Drug.) The scenery was interesting; it started out being really flat with lots of cornfields, then it started to get moundier and moundier, and suddenly, we were in the mountains! We camped at Horsethief Lake, which is about a five minute drive from Mount Rushmore (that is, if there wasn't road construction!). We called it Horsebeef Lake and even named the camp van Horsebeef!

Our camp setup. The little tent to the far right is mine and Erin's.

On our first full day we went sightseeing. First we headed to Mount Rushmore National Memorial. That was really cool. We saw the heads on our way to the campsite the night before, but it was cool to actually go into the park area.

In one of the museums at Mount Rushmore, the casts of the proposed faces.

What the memorial was supposed to look like, all the way to the waists. It was expensive and the artist died, so it will never be finished. Outside the window you can actually see the memorial and compare the proposed statue with today's statue. Unfortunately, that didn't show up on camera, so if you want to compare, you'll have to go see it yourself.

We took a trail to get as close to the statue as possible.

Teddy likes to eat broccoli :)

Washington is more visible than any of the other people because he sticks out more. We could even see his nose on the drive back to camp. Roosevelt is so far back because there wasn't enough rock there, but it was intended for all four presidents to be pretty much equal.

Flags from all 50 states plus DC and territories are on this walkway. I found Oregon my homestate and Nebraska my current state!

The white blur in the background is Mount Rushmore, perfectly framed by a tunnel!

After Mount Rushmore we drove through Custer State Park and got surrounded by this herd of bison. They got scary close!

After that we drove up this mountain. You can see both the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials off in the distance (we saw Crazy Horse up close after this, but we didn't go inside the park and I didn't take any pictures).

A fire happened on the mountain several years ago, so you can see the death and regrowth.

Hmm... was it really a thunderstorm, or were some people just playing with fireworks?

Then we went to a neat little 1800s-style town. There was a blacksmith that engraved my name in a railroad spike. That was pretty cool. There was even an old-fashioned saloon.

Use this to mow your lawn!

The next day we went rappelling and rock climbing in an area behind Mount Rushmore. I believe the big rock in the picture below is the back of Mount Rushmore.

 That evening, we went back to the memorial for the lighting ceremony. The do a ceremony each night, but this ended up being a special lighting ceremony to honor some military members who had recently died. Senator George Mcgovern was even there to speak!

George Mcgovern speaking

The lights went on, and he said "It feels like a halo just came on me!"

Lit-up Mount Rushmore

All veterans and employees of the correctional facility where some people were recently killed were invited onstage to retire the flag.

 On our last full day there, we hiked Mt. Harney. It was a six mile round-trip hike! A lookout tower was at the summit. It was exhausting and one bottle of water definitely was not enough!

Finally we started heading home. We stopped at a church and spent the night in their basement, and then continued driving home today. The end!