While in South Dakota, we drove to Mt. Rushmore.  I always thought Mt. Rushmore was right next to the town of Sturgis, SD because I’d seen a commercial for the motorcycle rally that showed the main street of Sturgis and Mt. Rushmore was right there big as life.

Well, that was incorrect!  Mt. Rushmore is almost an hour from Sturgis and is way out in the middle of the Black Hills area.  Beautiful country though!  The road we took was very winding and narrow and had several places where the road actually looped around itself to gain height up/down the mountain!  Also, there were some tunnels that were one-lane…you drove to the entrance, stopped and looked and honked, and if nobody was coming you could go through the tunnel.  Interesting!!

Mt. Rushmore itself is very impressive!  It was built during the depression and created jobs for a lot of men.  There were several setbacks during the construction, one of which was a crack in the rock that required the face of Washington be shifted a bit in the middle of making it so the crack wouldn’t cause his nose to fall off (yipes!)

The visitors area is impressive – you park and walk up some stairs and through a sort of gateway and then – there it is!  Several people would just stop in their tracks right there to take a picture, so you have to watch where you’re going to avoid bumping into them LOL

Here are pictures we took of the mountain: