The long trek home but not quite done yet

After our run in with the Buffalo while leaving Yellowstone, we began our long drive back east. At this point we were somewhere around 1600 miles from home. I drove out of Yellowstone and

into Cody WY. The road out is long, narrow and winds around mountain after mountain of burnt Ponderosa pines. I remember this drive from 2004 and the land had just been on fire a few weeks before. The pines must take a long time re seed because there was very little new growth trees for miles.Anyways, we refueled and restocked our food in Cody and got back on the road to Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. As soon as we got there we set up our tent and made some lunch. The we made our way up to Mt. Rushmore. The road to Mt. Rushmore was one of the most ridiculous drives I've ever made because it's filled with tight turns. There is not a single part of that road where you drive straight for more than 20 yards. Not to mention the Garmin told me to cut through someones yard to get to another road that was actually 5 miles in the other direction.

We finally got there after Sarah bouts of car sickness, luckily she didn't get sick. Neither of us

had ever seen Mt. Rushmore before and now I am very glad we took the drive out there. Its

something that everyone has seen in books since they were kids but rarely actually get to see in person. It was really cool to see and we took some great pictures. I thought the museum and

history behind it was just as neat as the mountain itself. There is a trail that goes around the front of the mountain to give you some neat perspectives of each face and ends in the sculptures actual original studio and passes by one of the original diesel air compressors that was used to

power the jackhammers that chipped away the rock.

Here is the Aveunes of the States at the foot of Mt. Rushmore. Each column has four states on it with an inscription of the date it became a state.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson

Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln

George Washington

This is the artists final sculpture that was used as the template for the drawing. In the museum they said that variations in the rock formation would not allow them to complete the lower half of the sculpture so it was left as just heads.