My Family Comes to Visit - Part 2 (Mount Rushmore)

Early Friday morning (after Thanksgiving Day) we headed out on a road trip with my parents and brothers to see Mount Rushmore!  It's only a 5 hour drive from Fort Collins, and none of us had ever been there, so we figured this was a great opportunity.  It was just a quick trip (Friday morning to Saturday evening), but we were able to see a couple things including: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Jewel Cave and the Black Hills of South Dakota.  We stayed in a hotel in Custer, SD and enjoyed going out to eat and playing games in the hotel room on Friday night.  See below for more info and pictures:

Mount Rushmore:
It was really cool to see this amazing and famous rock sculpture up close and in person.  I also enjoyed walking through the museum and reading/watching/learning more about how it was made.  I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to figure out how to do all that, especially in the 1920's!  The rocks below the structure are from all the dynamite blasts used to carve the faces.  I learned that they used dynamite to carve 90% of the structure and also that they were originally going to carve each president from head to waist but had to end early because of WWII and lack of funding.

U.S. state flags

We got there late in the afternoon, so we were also able to see the monument at night with the lights turned on, which was pretty cool too.

Crazy Horse
If you're like me, you've probably never heard of Crazy Horse and didn't even realize another carved mountain structure existed.  Well, let me tell you a little bit about this one (for those that are interested) . . .  Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader who was murdered by a military guard while under a flag surrender.  The monument is in honor of him and all Native American people in general.  It's located just 10 minutes away from Mount Rushmore and construction began in 1948.  It's nowhere near being finished (mainly because they have very few people working on it - {it's a family project, so currently only 8 people are carving the mountain}, and they don't accept government funding, just donations from people like us who paid to see the work in progress).  It's also much bigger (or will be) than Mount Rushmore - the 4 faces of the presidents would fit into the one face of Crazy Horse.  The cool thing about this place is it's more of an educational/cultural center than just a cool sculpture.  There is an Indian Museum and Native American Cultural Center with lots of things to do and see and learn about the Native American people.

This is what it will look like when completed.

Jewel Cave
Normally, there are lots of other things to do in the areas surrounding Mount Rushmore, but since it's the off season, everything else was closed . . . except for this cave.  So we decided to check it out.  We missed out on the main tour, so we just did a quick 30 minute tour into one tiny part of the cave.  Jewel Cave is the 2nd longest cave in the world and got it's name from the many Jewel-like crystal formations on the wall of the cave.  It was a fun thing to see, I just wish we could have done the longer tour.

Black Hills
The part in South Dakota that we drove through was actually really pretty.  The hills are completely covered with trees, making them appear black.  This picture was taken just outside of the Jewel Cave.

We made it back in time on Saturday night to go to Rocket Fizz for some yummy soda's and have Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner (my favorite!)

I'm glad we were able to take this fun little road trip and cross another State off my list!  I'm really glad my family came to visit for Thanksgiving, we had a great time with them!