Day 54 - Mt. Rushmore, SD to Casper, WY
- Mike Mladenoff
- May 25, 2016
- 2 min read
We left the KOA resort about 11AM and headed down the road to Crazy Horse.
Before heading inside to the visitor's center, we ate lunch in the Crazy Horse monument parking lot. It appears that the altitude here was very close to turning our bag of chips into shrapnel.
As we waited for our bus ride up the hill to get closer to the monument, we browsed the store and learned about the history of the local Native Americans
A short bus ride up the hill and we arrived at the monument. Here, the guide gave us a little history tour and we watched some of the sculptors do their work.
After taking the ride back to the visitor center, we went to the outside area where there was a scale model showing the finished product with the real progress in the background. The progress on the mountain has been painfully slow and after 65 years the work is about 15% complete.
After leaving Crazy Horse it was not long before we crossed into Wyoming.
Back on the road, we could not help but notice vast areas of the Black Hills that had been decimated by pine beetles.
We were faced with a dilemma. Do we head west and visit Devil's Tower or do we head south to visit Jewel Cave. Since going west meant at some point we would have to travel the steep grades of the Bighorn Mountains we chose to avoid straining the RV and our nerves and headed south to Jewel Cave National Park.
Kristen had no intention of going on the cave tour, so she and Rachel went to the large cave room adjacent to the visitor center and the boys took the elevator down 700 feet to get the scenic view of the cave.
It in the dimly lit environment, it was difficult to get good pictures without a tripod, which we did not have.
Halfway through the tour, the guides turned off the lights for 3-4 minutes and we got to experience pure darkness.
The tour came to an end after about 90 minutes and we took the 3 minute elevator ride back up and met up with the girls and it was time to leave and see the rest of Wyoming.
Comments