Starting Mileage Badlands: 64,632
Ending Mileage Mt. Rushmore: 64,740
Distance: 108
Duration: 2.5 Hours w/ 1 stop at Wall Drug Believe it or not this is the same day as the Badlands hikes. Got to the Mt. Rushmore early afternoon and did the whole tour and hike. This is actually the original 1:12 scale model used to carve the mountain. The park rangers gave a great presentation on how they went from the model to the mountain. Later that afternoon I drove to the Crazy Horse Monument. This thing dwarfs Mt. Rushmore; however, it isnt expected to be completed for another 30 to 50 years. It will take that long partly because they refuse to accept any government funding. They would like the entire thing to be funded via donations and admission fees. Much of the art work for sale is donated and the proceeds are used to pay workers and buy equipment. This is a model of what it will look like when finished. Really not much progress on the actual mountain. Just the face is all they have so far. They say that all of Mt. Rushmore will fit in the head of Crazy Horse alone.   From Crazy Horse I took an awesome ride back to the hotel in Keystone (Mt. Rushmore area). This was a cars only road that was incredibly fun to drive. This is when active suspension really pays off. Really this much fun should not be had. I tried to take a video of it from my digital camera. Unfortunately, the website doesn't accept the format I recorded in. I'll try a different way another time. |
