Chapter 10, Mount Rushmore, Keystone, and Wall, South Dakota, 2026

After visiting Ellsworth Air Museum, Custer State Park, and the Mammoth site, the last thing to see in the area was Mount Rushmore.  It was a short drive from our RV park and we were again driving through portions of Custer, State Park, and seeing animals and beautiful scenery along the way.  You can see Mount Rushmore before you ever get there.

There is lots of underground parking for cars but little room for motorhomes so leave your RV's at the RV park and come in your car.  The parking is $10.00 but $5.00 for seniors.  The rest of the experience is free.

 

After leaving the parking lot, you come to your first close view of the Monument.

 

They have an excellent museum where they explain how the entire project was conceived and built.  It was spearheaded by American sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who died months before the project was considered finished.  The project was then completed under the direction of his son, Lincoln Borglum.

Borglum selected the figures to carve on the mountain because they represented significant milestones in the development of our country.  His idea in carving the immense figures into the side of the mountain was "to cut art directly into the crust of the earth so that the "mark" of American greatness and liberty would last for millennia".

 

George Washington represented the birth of the nation and the struggle for independence.

 

Thomas Jefferson represented the expansion of the country, especially through the Louisiana Purchase.

 

Theodore Roosevelt represented the development of the nation and its appearance on the world stage including his emphasis on conservation and construction of the Panama Canal.

 

Abraham Lincoln represents the preservation of the United States during its greatest trial, the Civil War.. 

 

Before going through the museum, we watched the video of how the monument was planned and built. 

 

Sitting in front of us in the theater was a man and woman. As the video continued to explain who is depicted on the side of the mountain, the narrator mentioned that there was not enough room to add any more President's heads because the quality of the rock on either side of the existing heads would not support such an undertaking. The man and woman sitting directly in front of us, heaved a huge sigh of relief and commented that they were glad that President Trump would not be on Mount Rushmore. Amazing!!

 

 

In the museum, they have the actual models that were used to help the builders determine where to make cuts in the rock in order to achieve the finished product.

 

 

 As you could see in the previous picture, there is a black bar protruding over George Washington's head. Hanging from that bar is a string with a plumb bob on the end.

 

 They used these models along with plumb bobs and tape measures to plan where to make their cuts on the mountain side. In this example, they would measure how far down and how far out from a reference point the plumb bob touched the nose.  They knew the relationship of the size of the model to the size of the finished head, and they were then able to convert the measurements made on the model to the correct measurements for that same point on the mountain. Then they would keep chipping away the rock until the plumb bob on the mountain was at the same measurement point as the plumb bob on the model. They use this method throughout the construction in order to determine the exact position of each of the facial features.

 

Once they determine where to cut the rock, men would rappel over the side of the mountain to the proper work location where they would use pneumatic jackhammer drills. These drills would initially drill holes where dynamite was inserted, and then large chunks of the mountain would be blown away to get down to the proper place, where finer carving could occur.

 

 

Here is a very interesting YouTube video that shows how this all worked. There is a commercial in the middle of the short video, but I recommend you watch to the end because it is amazing how they figure out how to make the eyes so realistic.

Click HERE to watch the video 

 When we left Mount Rushmore, we drove to the town of Keystone, which was a short distance away. It seems like a major tourist stop for people to use as a home base while visiting Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park. There were lots of hotels and a whole bunch of interesting stores. There was one very large operation where they were making chainsaw carvings out of whole trees.

 

They really seem to like the abominable snowman, and this one was made out of hundreds of pieces of wood and was gigantic.

  When we finished in Keystone, we headed back to the RV park to get ready for our next leg of the trip, which would take us into North Dakota.

 Our RV park in Hermosa was a perfect home base and was a very large facility. They have over 1000 spaces. It was called Heartland RV park and we would recommend it to anybody going to the area to explore.  It is also a Passport America, RV park and because of that, our nightly rent was 50% off.

 

We have been using Passport America for many years and it has saved us hundreds of dollars in our travels. We are not sponsored by them, but for all of you that travel in an RV, it is something to consider. 

To learn more about Passport America, click HERE 

When we started our drive toward North Dakota, we first had to go east on interstate 90. That took us to the town of Wall, South Dakota.  Wall is most famous for Wall Drugs, a store that was started in 1931 and has been operated continuously by the same family.

Initially, because of the Great Depression, the store had very few customers, and they decided that they needed a gimmick to get people to come into the store. All along the highway in both directions, for hundreds of miles, they began placing signs advertising free ice water. 

This drew people into the store, and it has grown from there. The store is also famous for five cent coffee, which they still offer.  There are 800 people that live in the town of Wall, and it looks like most of them are either employed at Wall drug or the surrounding businesses that support Wall drug. There are over 2 million visitors per year that come to browse through the huge store.

 

What started out as a small little store in a small little town has grown. It now covers one entire city block. 

Inside, you walk from room to room and you can tell that what used to be many many small shops have been combined into one giant store. It looks like each of the small stores are now connected through doorways that have been made through each of the walls that used to separate the stores from each other.

 

They have lots of interesting displays and exhibits.

A long time ago, on a different trip, somebody told Suzie about Jackalopes. Ever since then, she has wondered if that is a real thing or not. At Wall Drug, she was able to find out.

You could spend all day wandering in and out of the various portions of the store, or go to the restaurant that seats 500 people, but we had places to go and people to see so we headed out toward North Dakota.

 The town of Wall is located right on the edge of the badlands in South Dakota, and although we did not go through Badlands National Park in South Dakota on this trip, we were able to see some of the similar terrain as we headed to North Dakota.

It wasn't very long before we pulled into the town of Fort Pierre.  It is located on the Missouri river and on the other side of the river is the town of Pierre, which is the capital of North Dakota.

 

We pulled into a really nice city park that had campsites, and we were able to stay several days as we explored Pierre.

 

In the next blog, Suzie's going to take us around the sites in Pierre, North Dakota. 

This has been a very interesting trip so far, but we have been so busy sightseeing that we have been falling behind on the blogs. We will get more out when we can and we hope ya'll get a chance to get out and see the country because there is a lot to see.
 

 

Chapter 9, Mammoth Site, 2026

After visiting Custer State Park, our next adventure took us to an attraction that our friend Dave Murlin told us about after reading our previous Blogs.  Dave told us that a place called Mammoth Site was a close day trip away and that the trip would be well worth it.  We had never heard of this place before and decided to go check it out.

On this location in 1974, a new housing development was supposed to be built. During the site preparation, a bulldozer was working when the operator saw a stark white object protruding from the fresh dirt that had been scraped by the bulldozer.  The dozer operator examined the white object and realized that it was some type of bone and stopped excavation while he notified the property owner that there was something unusual at the Site.

After the initial discovery, a paleontological dig of the site commenced.  What they discovered, was absolutely unbelievable, and turned out to be the largest concentration of Mammoth remains in the world. As the exploration continued, it was decided they should build a structure over the site to preserve it, as well as prevent damage from the harsh winter weather conditions.

Once inside, we bought tickets and watched a video that described how so many bones became trapped here.

We bought a selfie stick to use on this trip and we are still trying to learn how to use it.  Sometimes, when we review our pictures, after our trip, we find out we haven't quite mastered it yet.

We are going to keep trying though.

The video explained that this site was once a large, steep sided sinkhole, and that, after the sinkhole was formed, a warm water spring filled the hole. This warm water promoted the growth of vegetation around the edges and drew the large animals to the site to feed. As they waded out into the warm water, they would then tumble into the deep pool, and because of the steep, slippery muddy sides, they were unable to climb back out, and eventually drowned, sank to the bottom, and over thousands of years were covered over with sediment and preserved.

You may have noticed a small elephant with a QR code on it in the lower right hand corner of the previous picture.

They have these QR codes scattered around the dig, and by pointing our camera at the code, we were able to play an audio description of what we were seeing. Click on the link below and you will be able to listen to the description of what we are looking at.

Click HERE to listen to the description of this stop on the tour.

The amount of bones that they discovered was amazing.

 

 

We wondered how this could have happened and why there were so many bones in this one spot.

As we walked around the sinkhole, we continue to see amazing collections of bones. It must've really been a thrill to participate in the removal of the sediment, revealing the bones one after another. 

To hear a description of the previous video, click HERE.

To hear the description of the previous video, click HERE..

 

 

  

To hear a description of the following picture, click HERE

 

 

To hear a description of the following picture, click HERE.

 

We then moved to the other end of the dig.

Hear about the following video, click HERE.

 

We also discovered that Suzie is not older than dirt!

 

Beside finding  the remains of Mammoths, they also found numerous other animals, including bears.  We didn't know that there was such a wide variation in the size of bears, but this exhibit helped demonstrate the wide variety. 

  The display of their skulls removed from the dig reminded us that we don't want to mess with bears. 

 

 

 

After we left the mammoth site, we took a different route back to our RV park, again, through Custer State Park.  This took us past Wind Cave National Park.

 

 We decided that since we have never been there before, we better take the little side road and see what it was all about. It turns out that you have to be there about 8 o'clock in the morning in order to reserve a position for the underground tours, and they were sold out for the next two days so we continued on our way into and through Custer State Park.

 

It started to rain lightly, but it was still beautiful.

 

We came across several more herds of buffalo, and they had lots of babies.
 

  They owned the roads and you just had to wait until they got out of the way.

 

That was our last day at Custer State Park, but there was still one more day to go. We still had to visit Mount Rushmore.

 

Hope you enjoyed this and we will try to keep more coming when we have time. It seems like we stay so busy exploring that there's not much time left in the day to prepare these blog chapters, but we will keep them coming when we can.   

 

Tom and Suzie