Presidents, Buffalo, and Needles

After spending the night in Rapid City, South Dakota, Phillip and I headed south toward Keystone and Mount Rushmore. En route, just south of Rapid City, we stopped at Fort Hays, a historic site that also had props used in the movie Dances with Wolves. We decided make reservations for the fort’s chuckwagon dinner and show this evening since I planned for us to return to Rapid City for the night. On to Keystone, and a few miles further: Mount Rushmore. The main reason for this trip. It was magnificent. We walked thru every display, trail and museum on the site. The cost was certainly reasonable for the visit, only $11 to park with no other admission fee. And no pesky vendors, either.

We decided to get the audio tour headsets and were glad that we did, as we learned the entire story of the building of the monument. Originally, only George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were to be there, but Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were added. Roosevelt was actually a controversial selection in 1927, as it hadn’t been very long since he had left the Presidency. However, he was included because he started the national park system and championed all things nature.

The audio tour also gave us interesting facts such as that Thomas Jefferson was originally planned to be on the other side of Washington, but a crack in the granite as they were creating his statue, so they dynamited him away and put him in a different location. Also, Bourland, the creator of the monument, came up with the idea to use a column of granite for the pupils of the presidents’ eyes. This gave the eyes shadows and depth and made it seem like the eyes moved as the sun and shadows moved across the faces.

We left Mount Rushmore at about 11 am, just as the crowds were really arriving. Custer State Park is just a few miles from Mount Rushmore and we took the three main scenic roads of this state park, Iron Mountain Road, Wildlife Loop Road, and Needles Highway. We noticed a traffic back-up as we were driving in the park, and sure enough, a herd of buffalo was crossing the road. We stopped before the back-up and were able to see them across the field. Here are some of our buffalo pictures, and yes, I was about twenty feet (behind a car hood) when I took one of the pictures:

We continued on thru the park after our buffalo sighting, Seeing other critters including

deer, more prairie dogs, and antelope. Portions of the park are fields of grass, but other portions are in the mountains. We were driving on some roads that made me clutch the console and lean toward Phillip. I knew he wasn’t going to drive us over a cliff, but the roads, if not going thru fields, were frequently quite narrow as they twisted around the mountain sides. The scenery and rock formations, however were beautiful.

 

The most harrowing section of the park drive was the one on Needles Highway. Phillip would laugh at me as I gasped, then held my breath on some of the turns that did not have guardrails – and that was actually most of them! We came across several one lane tunnels, with signs advising the cars to sound their horns before proceeding very slowly. The summit of this highway had a formation called the Eye of the Needle and the longest one-lane tunnel of them all.

The final road we took in Custer State Park put us back in the town of Keystone. I’d read

about the gold mines in the area, so we took a mine tour of the actual Big Thunder Gold Mine. After being dug for 32 years, it has been out of operation for decades as a gold mine, and wasn’t very successful of a mine when it was dug, but it was authentic. Cool and damp as you might expect a long cave built into the mountain would be. The average height of the miners a century ago was 5’2”. Even I had to duck in places to get under the bracing. After the mine tour, Phillip panned for gold at Black Thunder. I’ll just show you two pictures and you can see that we did not make our fortune, or even pay for a postcard stamp with the gold he got!

 

After Big Thunder, we headed back north to Fort Hays for our dinner and show. Before dinner, we had plenty of time to walk around Fort Hays. Two of their buildings had been used as sets for scenes in Dancing with Wolves. Early in the movie, Kevin Costner’s character got his orders from his commander. The room which was used was persevered for folks to walk thru, full of stills from the movie.

For the chuckwagon dinner, we went into a brick-floored

room with picnic tables end-to-end that could seat 30 people on each side. We then filed by row thru the serving line, where we were provided tin plates for our beef or chicken, sides, biscuit, and dessert. Lemonade was served in tin cups to the approximately 300 people. The food was tasty, and when everyone had finished, the variety show started, a mix of country music and a comedian. It was OK, and several of the musicians did a fine job; however, those picnic tables did not make comfortable seating for the show. We actually left before it was over and headed back to Rapid City to find another hotel.