We began our tour of South Dakota at Wind Cave National Park, which is apparently the fourth longest cave system in the world. Now this would be impressive, except for the fact that we saw the longest cave system in the world way back in Kentucky. But what Wind Cave has that most others, including Mammoth Cave, don't have, is this formation called boxwork. Boxwork are these skinny strips of rock hanging down from the ceiling and criss-crossing each other in every direction, forming the sides of little hollowed out boxes coming down from the ceiling. If you've ever seen one of those plastic containers that has all the little compartments for holding beads or something like that, imagine lots of those glued together in huge shapes and hanging down from the ceiling. That's kind of what boxwork looks like. Boxwork, however, was pretty much the only cool thing about this cave. It couldn't hold a candle to the other caves we've seen, and in addition to the throng of bikers I've already pointed out, we were also saddled with a group of the most inane high schoolers you've ever met; they were discussing whether this could be a natural park (yes, they confused national and natural) since they had built a visitor's center and laid a path in the cave, whether or not poison ivy was actually poison, and how one of them had broken the elevator and killed us all simply by touching a fuse box along the path. And that was all before we even went into the cave. Let's just say Mike and I did everything possible to keep as far away from those kids as we could, but there's only so far you can get without loosing the tour.
From the cave, we drove up through the park and through Custer State Park, where we saw several forms of wildlife. We passed by a herd of buffalo grazing in the grass a ways back from the road, then we saw some deer who stopped and stared at us briefly before deciding it was best to run away. Then we passed some buffalo excrement in the road, and just as Mike was saying can you imagine them actually being in the road, we round a bend and lo and behold there was another small herd of buffalo in the road and on both sides, with some of them walking across the street in front of cars and others walking along the street parallel to the cars. (And when I say cars, of course I mean about 2 or 3 cars and about 100 motorcycles). Some of them even came so close that we probably could have touched them had we stretched our hands all the way out. They didn't come nearly as close, though, as the donkeys we came upon next. One of them sidled right up to Mike's open window, rested it's head on the mirror, and was pretty much just waiting there for us to give it some food. After a while I guess it realized it wasn't getting anywhere and it moved on to the next car, or should I say motorcycle. Remember to check out our pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daphneseesamerica/ if you don't believe me!
As we made our way through the park, we decided to continue on to Mount Rushmore rather than saving it for the next day, since it was still fairly early and the road through the park turned into a scenic route to the monument. See, the road has these 3 short tunnels on it blasted out of the rock, and as you come through each one you can see Mount Rushmore straight ahead of you, beautifully framed by the pine trees surrounding it. Unfortunately, we didn't find that out until today, since when we tried to do it yesterday the road was blocked off by, what else, a motorcycle accident, and we had to turn around and go back the other way. So we decided to go the Crazy Horse Memorial instead. Well let me tell you, if I were Crazy Horse I would not be happy. It's supposed to be this magnificent sculpture of Crazy Horse sitting atop his horse with his arm outstretched and pointing, but even though construction began in 1948, all you can see is his face and the painted outline of where the horse's head will be. There was also a pretty small and even more pointless museum/visitor center on the grounds, which did little more than talk about the progress (or lack thereof) of what was supposed to be the grandest sculpture in the world. Very disappointing and totally not worth the twenty bucks we paid to get in.
This morning, we decided to try that scenic route to Mount Rushmore again, and after much interference from motorcycles both on and off the road (they seem to think it's ok to just stop their bike and either look around or talk to each other right in the middle of the road), we finally made it to Mount Rushmore. After a very frustrating drive, we pull up to the gate only to find out that even though they are a national monument, they don't accept the annual pass (which is supposedly good on all federal land) and we have to pay to get in anyway. This is ostensibly because the parking lot was outsourced to some random company so we were paying for parking rather than an entrance fee, but really it's just bull shit. After trying to navigate the swarm of bikes in the parking lot for about 20 minutes, we finally get a space and enter the monument. Which looks pretty much the same as it did from the road! One might say I was not a happy camper, and one would be correct. Also, while the carving is notable for it's detail and accuracy, it's actually not as big as I expected it to be. I thought it would be enormous and overwhelming, with the faces stretching the height and length of the whole mountain; instead they are just four fairly large faces carved into the side of an even larger mountain. I was also disappointed to find out that the sculpture was never actually completed to its intended point, but work was pretty much just halted where it was upon the death of the designing sculptor and the onset of WWII. This is why Washington's whole head and shoulders are carved all the way out of the mountain, while Lincoln's face looks almost like a mask they just put on top of the mountain, not protruding any further than his ears. I would have been much happier had we simply seen it from the road and not had to pay for and then deal with the stressful mess of parking.
But the day improved as we drove a bit further east to Badlands National Park. While the bikers were still around, the crowd did thin out a bit, which was in improvement in and of itself. And the park itself is just beautiful. Like most of the beautiful sites we've seen, it defies description. But the hills and rock formations are just as beautiful as any we've seen, with magnificent stripes of color highlighted by the ridges carved into the sides. And the juxtaposition of these formations to the great plains that they inhabit is amazing, with little (or sometimes not so little) mounds of rock protruding straight up from the completely flat area around it.
Overall, I would say that the state has some surprisingly cool stuff to offer, but it is also the biggest tourist trap we have seen yet, unnecessarily exploiting millions of dollars a year from unsuspecting tourists who think they are seeing something much more spectacular than it actually turns out to be (and yes, here I am referring to both the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore). But, if it wasn't for the bikers, I think I actually could have enjoyed South Dakota.
states driven through: 25
states visited: 16
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