Today we were able to see Mt Rushmore and the Black Hills before leaving South Dakota and getting into Wyoming.

Joe at Mount Rushmore

Honestly, I won’t be able to describe the Black Hills to you. I don’t have the poet’s gift. Steph took more beautiful images and those will allow you to see a glimpse of what we saw today.

I have wanted to see Mt Rushmore since I was a kid. Yet, the sculpture on the mountain was far less impressive to me than the land it was hewn from. I have seen some wonderous places (The Alps of Switzerland and Bavaria, the the Rockies of Colorado, the Highlands and Moors of Scotland, not to mention the beauty of Michigan). The Black Hills are the equal to any of those. There are outcroppings and gnarly old junipers shaded by beautiful pines. The air is perfumed with their scent. It was truly majestic.

Mount Rushmore profile

We heard the history of the making of the sculpture. We saw a bronze plaque that shows the epitome of “Manifest Destiny”. We wanted to get ice cream (because we were told that Thomas Jefferson brought the first recipe back to America. But the price for the ice cream was exorbitant and the batch Jefferson made was probably already melted, so we skipped the ice cream.

Tonight we are in Buffalo WY. We crossed hundreds of miles of cow pasture to get here. We saw the sun set behind the mountains as we rolled in to town. Tomorrow we head to Billings, MT (I think that’s the place) and then down into Yellowstone.

Click on the photos to the side to see full images.

J