Daily Didactic
We awoke late on our fifth anniversary in the scenic Blue Bell campground, in the even more scenic Custer State Park. We retraced our route up the very fun Needles Highway, doing a little better at capturing it in pictures, and made our way to Mount Rushmore. Neither of us really knew what to expect and our initial reaction was that the faces weren't really all that big. After a couple of hours in the visitor's center we became convinced that they really are that big, even if they don't look like it. We think this is because all you ever see is the faces in close up, and not looming over the larger rubble pile below that was blown out of the mountain to make them. Any which way, they are pretty cool.

We left Rushmore and headed to their companion piece, the Crazy Horse memorial, down the road. We ended up opting out because of the eighteen dollar entry fee, which is too bad, Rushmore had been only eight dollars. We revisited the town of Custer for a cup of coffee, gas and a little more internet access and backtracked toward Rapid City. We headed down I-90 to the town of Wall, stopping at the uber tourist trap Wall Drug to do a little anniversary shopping. This is quite a place. Brian had passed it before, but is happy to have fallen for it this time. Brian got an anniversary baseball cap, Theresa got an anniversary t-shirt. We left Wall and headed for the Northeast Entrance to the Badlands and found a site at Cedar Pass Campground for the night.

Daily Pictures (Slide Show)

Morning at Blue Bell campground, Custer State Park		Needles
The Needles highway		Approaching a tunnel on the Needles highway
A bus sized tunneled		More Needles
Scenic Sylvan lake		Birds of a feather at Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore visitor center, she was posing for her mom...		The rubble below used to be the mountain face
We were the only folks who thought of this, honest		Washington profile
The Crazy Horse memorial, the sign is a birthday wish for the sculptor's wife		One of a hundred signs on the way to Wall Drug
Wall Drug tourist trap, in the town of Wall		This one is for Mary
No, we have nothing we need to tell you		Brian chatting it up with a local
Big Prairie Dog, Big Sky		The road into the Badlands
Looking back at the wall		The anniversary couple, sporting gifts

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