Road Trip Day 11 - Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse

Today we headed out to explore Jewel Cave National Monument and along the way we spotted some Bison on a side road so we stopped to get a closer look. There was even a brand new baby that still had wobbly legs. 

There was also some cool old vehicles that Kenton wanted to check out up close. 

Jewel Cave Monument was fun, even though the cave tours were not operating. We almost had the place to ourselves when we arrived.

The kids worked on their junior ranger booklets, first on the floor and later at this nice workspace against the wall by the gift shop that I found while exploring.

Apparently some of the cave tours require you to be able to squeeze through very small spaces. All of us were in agreement that we wouldn’t want to do that tour even if it was operating. (Tenley and Kenton were pretty sure I wouldn’t fit through anyway and I wasn’t about to try the “practice” tunnel.) 😂

We were able to see the natural entrance to the cave - similar to Wind Cave but much larger and not as gusty.

The kids and I came back to the RV for lunch and waited for Rob to finish working, then we all headed to Mt. Rushmore, the site that brought us here to South Dakota in the first place.

This is Tenley and Kenton posing with Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who carved Mt. Rushmore. He didn’t think of the original idea of carving faces in the stone, that was South Dakota historian Doane Robinson. He thought it would draw tourism to the area. However, Borglum chose the exact location and the subjects of the carving. 

This was the actual model that Borglum created, on a 1/12th scale, so that every inch of the model equaled 1 foot in the actual carving.

He worked on the project for 14 years, from 1927 - 1941, and only stopped when funding ran out during WWII.

They don’t advertise this, but when we ordered our lemonades, they asked us if we wanted them spiked. Vodka or rum! Just another reason why we are loving South Dakota.

The icecream was good too. Masks were required inside but not out.

Cool profile view of George Washington on the way back down from Mt. Rushmore.

We went back to the RV again for dinner (yay us for not eating out! I guess the last 2 hundred dollar meals gave us a little motivation to cook our own food.)

Tenley attaching her most recent badge to her junior ranger vest.

After dinner, the kids and I drove over to Crazy Horse (only about 20 minutes from our camp site) to watch the laser light show they put in every evening at 8:30.

It was very patriotic and moving, and it also told the story of Crazy Horse. It’s on Facebook live if you want to take a look. There was also a really cool lightning storm going on in the background, but I’m not sure how much if that my phone camera was able to capture.

We didn’t get to go to the top since we went so late in the day, so i guess we’ll just have to come back again sometime 😊