Estimated Mileage: 356 miles
Estimated Driving Time: 6.5 hours
We originally intended to camp that night in Badlands National Park near Interior, SD, but we got caught in a heavy rain storm (with lots of thunder and lightning - whee!) as we crossed the WY-SD border while on the 16. Camping didn't seem too desirable after that. So we drove as far as we could and stayed in a Motel on the Missouri River in Chamberlain, SD.
From Devil's Tower, we took the 14 to the 585 to the 16 before entering South Dakota and getting rained on. We tried stopping at the Crazy Horse Memorial, but it was raining too hard and the admission fee was rather high, so we were content to glimpse the unfinished statue in the mountain from afar. Below is a picture from the web (we couldn't get a good shot of it):
By the time we reached Mt. Rushmore, the rain died down a little bit and we decided to spend some time there. It was quite a nice memorial, with lots of stone pillars and flags from all 50 states.
The front of the memorial.
Rachel and I in front of the mountain. Somehow the lighting from the clouds and the way we took these pictures kind of obscures the monument.
We ducked into an ice cream shop within the memorial and Rebekah had her first taste of ice cream.
Needless to say, she liked it.
After finishing our treats, it cleared up a little bit.
One last picture before we headed out...
We got hungry in the middle of South Dakota, so we stopped at "Wall Drug", a big conglomeration of stores along a street in the city of Wall. It was advertised on the freeway with interesting billboards for hundreds of miles, starting sometime in Wyoming. It seems like most of the stores were expensive trinkets, and all we cared about was food, so the novelty was lost on us!
Rachel was certainly happy to stop!
We got into Chamberlain after 10 pm, and took this picture of the Missouri River the next day as we left.
And one more picture of the Missouri River... it sure is wide - probably over a mile!
2 comments:
What a memorable trip, with some good shots of the family and Mt. Rushmore.
Also fun to see Rebekah eating her first ice cream cone - what a cutie!
What a memorable trip, with some good shots of the family and Mt. Rushmore.
Also fun to see Rebekah eating her first ice cream cone - what a cutie!
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