Prairie Adventure Part 2

August 31 – Monday – Mt. Rushmore

Today was all about the Rushmore. Mount that is. We got up early to a pleasant surprise – part of the boofalo herd decided to mow the meadow that was right across from our cabin. The boys went to explore while I loaded Colin’s adventure pack for the day. A side note on traveling with the bumble: We brought a lot of new small toys, coloring books, etc. so that I could put something different and new in Colin’s new backpack each day. It was an easy way to keep him stocked with fresh entertainment as we rolled through the miles each day. But the best investment was a new portable DVD player that had a longer battery life than our other one. A friend at work gave me a stack of kids movies that Colin hadn’t seen, so he had new flicks to zone out to. If you’ve experienced Colin in motion, you may have discovered that the only thing to get him to actually cease motion is to put on a show.

Back to the Rushmore! We took part of one of the scenic (windy as hell) roads into the Rushmore, crossing through incredibly small tunnels (busses fit through these with an inch to spare! An inch! Wow I sound like an oldster!) and watching the fab foursome grow larger as we came around each bend. My first glimpse of the carving was kind of surreal. It was completely recognizable above a lush canopy of the trees that shade the hills black (a ha, you get where that’s going, right?) but in miniature. For some reason I think I had a better sense of the scale of the carving from that distance than up close.

In spite of a fresh adventure pack and movies, Colin wasn’t an easy boy this day. He’s equal parts a great fun traveling partner, and a schizophrenic diablo child. Stopping at viewpoints and getting out and then back into the car multiple times was more than his little circuit board could manage. So we just mustered through the whiney tantrums and used that fake Super! Happy! Parent! Voice! that I hate to use.

We pulled into the Rushmore and I was…impressed. All around. I have to say, the Rushmore is a very efficient and well-done park. And it’s terribly fun to call it the Rushmore. The roads were wide and multi-laned, the parking was easy, the concessions were not obnoxious or too terribly overpriced.

I totally felt the grandeur of the spot, and experienced the artist’s intended vision of the impact such a carving would make on visitors. When we were up close to Rushmore, the faces feel smaller than they really are, it’s hard to gauge how high the carving actually is and how massive the scale of the sculpture is. Colin loved looking through the binoculars so we shelled out quarters to keep him entertained. I have no idea what he was looking at though.

There is a great one-mile-ish loop that takes you closer to the base of the mountain and to the artist’s workshop. However, I enjoyed recognizing the steps that appear in National Treasure Duece! Today I’m super happy to have a digital camera – we took so many shot of Rushmore that the delete button will come in handy. Colin had a tantrum leaving. I never thought we’d have to drag our kid away from a national monument. In a few more years we’ll have to drag him into them.

After Rushmore we headed into Keystone (the town at the base of the mountain) and our first Laura Ingalls Wilder site (Keystone is a LIW site since this is where her sister Carrie settled). We found some tasty (finally!) lunch at a mexicano joint and then went on to the historical society. It’s an old schoolhouse and Colin had fun playing the part of a scallywag student. I found the Carrie Ingalls corner and had my looksie. Not a whole lot there so we moved onto our next adventure, the 1880 train!

I’m not sure why we keep doing this to ourselves. Colin loves trains so we booked a two-hour round trip ride on this antique steam-driven iron horse. Within five minutes… “I’m borrrreed. I wanna show. Waaaahwaah blah blah blah.” Although we were surrounded by a lot of grandparenty types, no one seemed to thrilled with the youngest passenger in the car. I don’t blame them.

After the ride we attempted a few other attractions but they were either closed, horribly overpriced and tourist-trappy, and the Bumble was done. We had wanted to see the lighting ceremony at the Rushmore, but It had been a long day so we made for the cabin, a little pizza and our beds.

September 1 – Tuesday – Up and Down

Best. Day. Yet. Today we went up, up,up, and down, down, down.


Our adventure began with a helicopter ride to see the Crazy Horse memorial. After the Rushmore meltdown, we were glad we had decided that a second visit to the other massive stone carving in the area may be too much for Colin. And we really wanted to get into a heli! It was fairly quick, nine mintues, but it felt longer. Colin was rather more impressed by the toy helicopter in his hand than the vistas to be seen, but he had fun and that’s what we were aiming for. None of us had ever been up in a helicopter before, and it was great to experience it as a family.

After the ride we went to Bear Country. This was one of those rather sad wildlife parks where the animals either look mournfully in your way, or ignore you with haughty disdain as you drive through their paddock. But we finally got to see an elk (the one Custer park inhabitant that we had not seen). On the plus side it had a whole passel of baby bears that were cute, cute, cute.

We had to make a stop at Dinasaur Park. It was a WPA project in the 30s to put local people to work. It's fantastically cheesy in a concrete attraction kind of way, but it was fun to let Colin clambor over the terribly realistic animals.

On our next stop we spelunked! in the very cool Rushmore Cave. Spelunk, kerplunk, cachunk. It’s a privately owned cave that has easy access – meaning, we didn’t have to crawl on our bellies to get in and out of the cave. Colin wasn’t bothered by the whole undergroundness of the adventure. And trying to keep him from going off the path or screaming at the top of his lungs kept me from being bothered by it. I’m not claustrophobic, but I’m certainly glad we spelunked in the age of electric lighting and improved handrails rather than by lantern glow.

Veventures over for the day, we returned to our cabin, walked around the park a bit and enjoyed hot dogs cooked over the fire, Pringles and some cold bud lights.

We turned Colin loose with a roasting stick, and once we convinced him that marshmallows are even more tasty when toasted and not just shoveled into the mouth from the bag, he made some admirable efforts to achieve the golden puffy glow of perfection.


A good end to a good day.