Our second day on the road
consisted of driving from Mitchell to Keystone, South Dakota. Our
roadside goals for this trip were to see the Badlands and Mount
Rushmore, but we got lucky with a couple other finds.
As you head down I90, the
opportunity will come to exit onto the Badlands Scenic Byway. If you
have the time, it's definitely worth the detour. It's difficult to
do the Badlands justice with photos, but here are some attempts:
We took quite a few more
pictures, and you can see them on the Flickr account.
Once we finished the
Badlands, we headed on towards Keystone, where Mount Rushmore is
located. On the way, we saw this unusual site by the roadside:
That's a “Goat Bridge”
designed to lure tourists into the Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo. The
goats seemed to enjoy hanging out on the bridge.
We finally arrived at
Mount Rushmore and discovered the sun was in almost exactly the wrong
place for photos, but we gave it our best shot.
Outside the Mount Rushmore
gift shop, we found this interesting historical tidbit. Thomas
Jefferson was not only an author of the Declaration of Independence,
but he also was recorded as creating one of the first known ice cream
recipes!
Keystone is a neat little
town nestled in the Black Hills. Here's the view from our hotel
parking lot:
Just up the road was an
interesting abandoned mine – it appeared that work was still going
on in an adjacent plant.
On our way out of town the
next morning, we stopped in Rapid City to pick up some supplies and
took a quick detour to the town's Dinosaur Park. These dinosaurs
were built in the 1930s by the WPA on the highest point in the city.
In the parking lot, we
found a historical marker commemorating the “Hangman's Hill” just
up the road, where two outlaws were hung in the 1800s. On the way
back, we discovered that this ghastly place was actually in someone's
front yard:
Plus side: great view of
the city.
Tomorrow: Devil's Tower,
Hulett Museum guns, and Indian guns!
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