South Dakota concentrate:
All the experiences in a fraction of the time
I never said all my experiences this summer would stay within Iowa. A week and a half ago I was in Galena, IL. This past weekend, I drove a bit further - actually, a LOT further - for my latest adventure. Welcome to my Black Hills experience!
Friday, June 12
Heading out from NW Iowa
The route was well charted, although it wasn't hard. Even the tourist spots we planned to stop at along the way to the Black Hills were all along I-90, making the directions ridiculously easy. The 'hardest' part was probably navigating out of Okoboji, and then convincing myself we were still going the right direction after we left I-90 in Rapid City as we headed for Keystone.
"We," by the way, is me and my friend Lynn who is a fellow Chamber professional in Iowa. After attending a number of conferences together, we have recognized we have far too many things in common, and this trip only proved it more. Even though my original plan a couple months ago was to make this trip solo, having Lynn along was SO much better. I mean - that's a whole lot of driving to do by oneself or, worse, with someone you don't get along with as well. I was glad Lynn was able to share in the crazy experiences with me. Just how crazy the experiences got will be explained later. :)
As anyone who's made this trip will attest, there are 2-3 stops you 'need' to make on the way to the Black Hills. I'm all about seeing cheesy tourist traps, so I had resolved to stop at all of them: The Corn Palace (Mitchell, SD), Al's Oasis (Oacama, SD) and, of course, Wall Drug (Wall, SD).
The Corn Palace; Mitchell, SD
A couple hours later along 90, we crossed the Missouri River and experienced one of the most gorgeous sights I've seen in a while. You literally come over a hill and you think you're about to drop off the face of the earth, but the Missouri River is huge and beautiful surrounded by rolling hills. I can't remember ever crossing a body of water that large without crossing into another state or country. Pretty impressive, but unfortunately I don't have any photos.
Al's Oasis; Oacama, SD
Just past the river Al's Oasis. We never met Al, and, truth be told, this was a last-minute add
based on a couple recommendations we got just a couple days before the trip. But Al is supposed to have the world's best Buffalo Burgers. Well, Al's is not your typical Oasis as it stretches out to include a couple souvenir stores, grocery store, bakery, restaurant and more things that, quite simply, just confused us a bit. We did learn that Al's Oasis is, however, "where the west begins." Not sure who determined that, or if Al just decided it was so, but that's what the sign said. The unfortunate part was that when we arrived in Oacama, we just weren't hungry enough to eat a buffalo so we just took a quick look around, filled up with gas (fuel - not buffalo), and headed back on the road.Wall Drug; Wall, SD
Where is Wall Drug? Well, it's in Wall, South Dakota, of course! What else is in Wall, SD? Not much! The story of Wall Drug is that it was started years ago during the Old West times, but the store owners weren't getting much traffic. In a stroke of genius, they decided they should
advertise free ice water to travellers heading West, and they started putting up a bunch of signs along the road. In fact, when the owner started putting up signs, the first customers beat him back to the store. The signs are key, because they are ALL ALONG I-90 ... starting in Minnesota, and apparently they go just as far West of Wall Drug into Wyoming. Truly - if you can't find Wall Drug, you're an idiot. :)So, what is Wall Drug? Well, it's a Drug Store. Duh.
Oh - well, it's also a few other things, too. Wall Drug is also a restaurant, cafe, ice cream parlor (with home made ice cream), leather store, cowboy boots & hats store, book store, old fashioned apothecary, toy store, jewelry store, and home of a caged, angry T-Rex, jackalope collection, stuffed bears on the wall, animated singing characters, dancing fountain, playground, photo studio, and a souvenir or two.
Yes, there are a couple other things in Wall, but they're all across the street from Wall Drug. For example, the Wall Post Office is there, along with a couple tacky souvenir stores, a bar and a bank. But the real attraction is Wall Drug.
Be warned; there are those out there who will try do dissuade first-timers from stopping at Wall Drug, citing it as tacky or a waste of time. However, I would argue ... that's the point! And Wall Drug is as much a part of Americana as apple pie. It's a humorous attempt at recapturing the Old West, and you'll kick yourself for not stopping - I don't care how old you are or who you are. You miss this, and you'll be sorry!
Sheer randomness; all over South Dakota
So, these were the things we knew we'd see along the way - the aforementioned stops. What we did not count on were the dozens of completely random things popping up all along I-90. Seriously. There is some crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. To name a few: swingset/playground all by itself in the middle of a field no one could get to, a dragon on a garage roof, tiny little church not even the size of a dog house, sculpture garden with an oversized buffalo head and horrendously awful metal creatures, a human skeleton "walking" a dinosaur skeleton on a leash, upside down firetrucks, buffalo (ok - maybe not so random, considering), fake horse, sign reading "BAR - on/off liquor," Exit 241 that goes nowhere, John the Baptist's van,
Reptile Gardens, the General Lee, a tiny little barn - again, not even large enough for a dog house (and nowhere near the tiny little church), a 7-lb peanut butter cup, and much more. While the trip from Okoboji, Iowa to the Black Hills was pretty long, the three planned stops along with all the complete randomness made for a pretty interesting drive.Saturday, June 13
The Black Hills!
We made it to the Black Hills late Friday night and realized why they call them the Black Hills. It's stinkin dark at night, and they apparently don't believe in street lights in the Black Hills area. We stayed in Keystone, SD, which advertised having the closest hotels to Mt. Rushmore. The town of Keystone is pretty small, but it has the touristy 'Old West' look that seems par for course for the area. On Saturday morning we got up and after breakfast our first stop was to go to the Borglum Rushmore Museum. Gutzon Borglum was the creator of Mt. Rushmore, and the museum stop was a great prelude to seeing the monument because we got to see som
e of Borglum's other works, along with the history of how he was chosen, how he did his work, why he chose the presidents he did, and more. My favorite part was finding out about Borglum's first attempt to carve a mountain in Georgia. He was commissioned to sculpt some of the Civil War heroes, but after he finished the head of General Robert E. Lee, he had an argument with the committee that hired him, and they fired Borglum. Well, unfortunately for Georgia, Borglum was the one with all the dynomite, so he blew up the head of Lee. The museum also had a life-size replica of the eye of Abraham Lincoln which put things in perspective a bit. Borglum came up with a way to make the eyes of all the presidents so that the sun would catch them and make them 'twinkle.' Kind of amazing when you think about it, but it really did give them even more depth. I was impressed.
After going through the museum we went straight to the monument itself. $10 to park, but the permit is
good for the rest of the year ... just in case I have another free weekend in the near future. Unfortunately it's non-transferable as they also included part of my license plate on the parking pass. However, they shortened my personalized Iowa CEVEGO plate so my parking pass reads "IA - EGO" which I find a little humorous in itself.So, Mt. Rushmore really is monumental. There's really no other way to describe it. I really kind of thought I'd show up and see it and be done with it, but it's impressive and I wanted to get as close as possible, and take as many photos as possible (although, they, of course, looked pretty much the same). The setting is beautiful, and the carving is just amazing. It's hard to not be a bit in awe looking at it.
Borglum chose the four presidents to sculpt, but they had to get approved by a committee. The only choice that met some debate was Teddy Roosevelt. I appreciate Borglum's rationale for his choices, and for his desire to sculpt the mountain in the first place. First, Borglum wanted to create a monument that was as impressive as America itself, so I was encouraged by his patriotism. Second, he chose each of the four presidents because of what he believed they symbolized for America: Washington - LIBERTY; Jefferson - DEMOCRACY; T. Roosevelt - COURAGE; Lincoln - UNITY. There's a walkway up to the mountain with all the flags of the 50 states, and then there's a path that takes you around the front of the base of Mt. Rushmore, so we walked around there taking photos along the way. The path (which is also featured in "National Treasaure II" of course) leads to another education center where we could also see a scale model of what the mountain was supposed to look like upon completion. Borglum died before they could finish the work entirely, which would have included more of Washington's and Lincoln's torsos. We could also see scale model of the Hall of Records. Borglum's original plan also included a room behind the faces of Rushmore that would store busts of "great Americans," as well as historical documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He had planned to create a grand staircase of 800 granite steps. Unfortunately, those plans were never finished. I mean - how cool would it be to actually climb Mt. Rushmore by staircase, and see that stuff?
We left Mt. Rushmore after a trip through the gift shop (of course), but planned to return later that evening for the lighting ceremony.
Time for lunch, we went back into Keystone to ride a chair lift up to a 'mountain top' lunch where we enjoyed more views of Mt. Rushmore, Keystone, and the Black Hills. That's where I had my first Buffalo Burger ... and it was great! Tastes like ground beef, but juicier and more flavorful. Getting down the mountain was the real fun, though. Instead of making the return trip via chairlift, we decided to experience "2000 feet of fun" on the "Presidents Alpine Slide." It's like the luge of the Black Hills. When we bought our tickets, we noted that we could buy tickets in packs of 5 or 10 if we wanted ... and now I know why. Man - who wouldn't want to take the slide down? Sure, there's a few warning signs, a waiver that needs to be signed, and a teenage kid at the top telling you to be careful in the turns or else you'll flip and get hurt or die, but - pish posh - that's a whole lot of fun. 2000 feet of fun, in fact.
After all that fun, we drove to the Crazy Horse Memorial. Now - word to the wise. Just because the sign says that something is 11 miles away in the Black Hills, don't think that means it's just about 10 - 15 minutes away. The roads through the Black Hills are, well, hilly and curvy and forces even a driver like me to go slow. Needless to say, Crazy Horse was a little bit away from Mt. Rushmore.
After Mt. Rushmore was started, Native American Indians commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski to sculpt one of their heroes in a mountain. Crazy Horse was one of the heroes of the Battle of Little Bighorn, and a hero to Native American leaders because of his dedication to serving others and perserving his culture. Let's get this straight, though. The Crazy Horse Memorial is not done. It's nowhere near done. You can most definitely see the image beginning, but it's taken over 50 years to get to this point. Crazy Horse is not being funded at all from government money; puposefully so, the Native Americans don't want to accept them and want the monument funded compeltely from donations. In addition, Crazy Horse is HUGE. In fact, the four faces of Mt. Rushmore (Washington's head is 60' tall) fit in the space of Crazy Horse's forehead. So, yes - if you put all the pieces together, that means that not only is the Memorial not done now, it's not going to be done in my lifetime.
It cost us $10/each to get in to the Visitors Center, essentially. If you're coming to Crazy Horse from Mt. Rushmore, you pretty much think that's your only option. However, if you're not so excited about seei
The Black Hills are really gorgeous. There are the little towns that pop up along the way that, quite frankly, don't offer a whole lot, but if we had more time it would have definitely been fun to do some hiking or more driving around to see more buffalo and great scenery. But what we did see was tremendous. With no offens
e to the state of South Dakota, I just don't think people would normally think of it as so beautiful. Given the opportunity to drive through South Dakota or to drive through Nebraska or Kansas, South Dakota will win hands down. I understand why it's a big area for camping, and I can understand why most people spend several days here - as opposed to the 36 hours we spent in the area. :)We did do a little shopping back in Keystone, but I think the most we came out with was a couple bottles of South Dakota wine (now chilling in my fridge). Our timing was good in that it started to rain in the late afternoon, so we were able to enjoy a nice dinner on the covered deck and enjoy a glass of wine while we watched the rain. Keystone was bustling. We did all there was to do in Keystone, so it doesn't take much, but it served as a good home base.
We did return to Mt. Rushmore in the evening for the night program and lighting ceremony. The rain hadn't let up yet, and it was getting cooler, but that didn't stop the crowds from showing up. We staked a great location under the cover of the elevator shelter, bought a deck of cards, and kept ourselves - and several others around us - amused until the show started.
The program was emceed by a member of the military who then introduced a video showcasing the history of Mt. Rushmore. We didn't bother coming out of our shelter for that since we had seen much of the same thing at the Borglum museum. However, it was a grand experience to say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the National Anthem right there at Mt. Rushmore. C'mon - admit it - you just got chills, too.
As the anthem starts playing, lights start fading up on the darkened mountain. The rain provided an interesting perspective as it kind of looked like the faces were even crying. After the anthem and lighting finished, the
emcee invited all those in attendance who had served or are currently serving in the military. That night there were several, which was so cool. They stayed on stage for the lowering of the flag, and then the emcee had each one introduce himself/herself. Before they started, though, he reminded them to listen carefully, because they have often had people come up and realize they were up there with members of their former unit. We didn't hear any of that on this night, but that must be a very emotional experience whenever it does happen. We were pretty chilled by the time the program was over, so headed back to our hotel right away and packed up for the long trip home the next morning. We had been staying at the Presidents View Hotel which was pretty basic, but, again, scored points for proximity. So I'd give them credit for that. However, our adventure wasn't completely over as we were awoken at 2:00 a.m. with crazy screaming in the hall that went on and off for about an hour and a half. It's not worth writing all the crazy details here, but we do know that some chick got kicked out of a hotel room, some guy was a felon, both had limited vocabulary, and neither were happy. At 2 in the morning it wasn't fun, but admittedly, we've been laughing about that ever since.
The trip back to Central Iowa was long, but we made it in just under 9.5 hours. Plenty of caffeine and snacks got us through, and we even got a bonus stop to see the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN. Lot of driving, but well worth it. I totally get why it's a national treasure (no pun intended). It might be a while until I go back, but I feel that much more satisfied after seeing it. Two thumbs up.
When I finally got home on Sunday evening, I was beat. And I was still tired on Monday. But now, revelling in the experience, I'm so glad I did it (and thrilled I had company), that I'm that much more excited for the next adventure. We're back in Iowa this weekend, but loving every minute of this Experience Summer!
No comments:
Post a Comment