Without really planning it, we found ourselves camping close to Mount Rushmore over the July 4th weekend. It's a cool area, with some great drives on The Iron Road and Needles Highway.
We decided to avoid Rushmore on the 4th and instead went to see it the day before. It's an inspiring visit, and the walk around the base gives you a good view of the carvings. But all in all, it's not a very long visit. We also got a look at the Crazy Horse Monument from the road as well.
Getting anywhere in this area seems to involve lots of interesting roads, with tons of switchbacks, 'pigtail' bridges (where you cross a bridge and immediately do a tight turn and drive under it), and super tight tunnels. Like, reach out and touch the side wall tight. All of these tunnels are single lane, so if you're, say caught behind a bus trying to navigate the clearances, it can take a while to get through.
Our Fourth of July was pretty chill. We had been keeping a pretty full schedule, getting up early so we can be out and about. The fourth was a down day, where we went for a short drive but mostly stayed close to camp. The Spokane Creek Campground, which turned out to be a pretty good one, btw), was sponsoring a few fun activities. You would think a little golf-cart parade where they threw candy to the campers would have been the main attraction, but it was actually a charity rubber ducky race. You paid $1 for a numbered rubber ducky, and at 3:30 they flood the stream and dump all the ducks in. Each one is numbered, and the first duck to navigate the rocks and pools and make it to a culvert at stream end wins half the money raised. The other half goes to a wounded veteran charity. It was really fun, and the entire campground got into it.
The next day we paid a quick visit to Wind Cave National Park. Touring a cave was one of the things Olive and Everett put on their list of 'must-do's' as we planned this trip, and we thought Wind Cave was a good choice. And it was beautiful and interesting. But we all left a little underwhelmed, due to the lack of info we received on the tour, and the way it was structured. About forty people walking in single file, stopping only a few times, with the leader way up front giving scant info that not many people could hear anyway. Definitely a bit of a disappointment.
After Spokane Creek we traveled to the town of Hulett for the night so we could visit Devil's Tower, of Close Encounters of the Third Kind fame. It's also famous as the first National Monument ever designated, with Teddy Roosevelt out-maneuvering a problematic congress to get it done, as well as a place of spiritual importance to many local native peoples. The approach is awesome, in the original meaning of the word. It keeps getting taller and taller, rising from the landscape around it as more details emerge. It's hard not to stop every few minutes and take a picture from each new perspective.
The hike around the Tower doesn't take long, but our walk was made more interesting by a sudden thunderstorm pelting us with huge drops of rain. Luckily Anne had the foresight to pack our raincoats, and we finished the hike relatively dry.
When we finished, who did we find at the little amphitheater but Teddy Roosevelt himself. Not the real Teddy, that would be creepy. It was a very good impressionist/actor who travels the country giving talks as TR. He happened to be at the tower that day, commemorating his work to make it a National Monument (did you think I just happened to know that fact I rattled off above?) and we chatted a bit and enjoyed him so much that we stuck aruond for his talk. A very cool unforeseen highlight to an already excellent visit.
Returning to our hotel, we tried to find a place for dinner, only to find Wednesdays seemed to be a day of rest for Hulett's restaurants. There was one place open, and a minute after we walked in the waitress flipped the 'Open' sign to 'Closed'. Our meal was overpriced and average, but it beat a dinner of granola bars and goldfish crackers.
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