18 July 2013
Today was spent driving around the Black Hills, including Mt. Rushmore, Spearfish, and Devil's Tower. Our route is the purple line on the map (not to be confused with the blue line, which is Interstate 90, or the vertical purple line, which is the border between South Dakota and Wyoming).
After passing through Rapid City and the incredibly touristy town of Keystone, we arrived at
Mt. Rushmore. There is a rather large visitors center, with the biggest and most crowded souvenir shop I've ever seen, and a huge parking garage, which they have managed to hide pretty well. To get to the viewing point, you go through a plaza containing the flags of all 50 states.
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| A tourist in front of the flag plaza |
Mt. Rushmore itself is impressive, although it doesn't look a whole lot different in person than it looks in books and postcards.
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| The Boys. |
You can't walk all the way up to the sculpture, but there is a path that goes under it for a closer view:
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| George, contemplating by himself |
We did see one strange thing, though:
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| Never did figure out what was going on here |
We then drove through the Black Hills, passing through the town of Lead (pronounced "Leed"), which is an old gold mining town that is pretty well preserved, but not as a tourist trap like Deadwood, a few miles away.
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| Downtown Lead |
From Lead, we took the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, which cuts through, of all things, Spearfish Canyon.
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| On the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway |
The Spearfish Canyon Byway ends in
Spearfish, which was one of the primary destinations for our trip. (See
Great Plains and Canadian Rockies for why we had to go to Spearfish).
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| My arrival in Spearfish |
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| What might have been.... |
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| On the campus of BHSU |
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| More of BHSU |
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The campus of
Black Hills State University is no threat to UNC or Duke in terms of appearance (or academics), but downtown Spearfish had some character to it, and the area around Spearfish was nice. However, I don't know if I would make the same statement if I were there in February.
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| Downtown Spearfish, home of the Spearfish Opera House |
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| More architecture in downtown Spearfish. |
From Spearfish, we headed to
Devils Tower, Wyoming, which was our stop for the night. Devils Tower is spectacular, both from a distance and up close, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Devils Tower is in the middle of nowhere, and there are no hotels/motels near it. We had booked a room in a B&B (the
Devil's Tower Lodge), which is actually within the park.
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| Devil's Tower Lodge |
The views of Devil's Tower from the lodge were very impressive.
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| View from our dinner table. Mashed potatoes were not served. |
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| View from the window of our room. The dot at the top is the moon. |
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| Exercising my zoom lens |
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| Our room at the Devils Tower Lodge |
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| View from the Lodge the next morning |
Next:
Wyoming, Montana, and Glacier National Park
