Thursday we made the drive from Nebraska to South Dakota. It was such a beautiful drive!
When we arrived at our RV park, it was initially a little stressful navigating the RV through trees to get to our spot. Once we were settled into our spot, we loved it! It’s been such a beautiful, great space.
I love being surrounded by trees in the mountains. The views and the weather have been amazing. We’ve even had to pull out our hoodies some evenings.
Friday afternoon, we made the short drive from our RV park in Rapid City to Mount Rushmore in Keystone.
We were able to see the Mount Rushmore National Memorial as we were driving toward it, and it really was such a grand view.
The Mount Rushmore sculpture features the 60-foot heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. It costs $10 to park at the memorial, but there are no other fees. We walked upstairs and through the grand entrance only to see people taking photos in front of a construction zone. I thought, “Really? There have to be some places with unobstructed views.” We walked around and happily found plenty.
There is a Sculptor’s Studio where we were able to see tools and models that were used during the construction of the Mount Rushmore memorial. We found out that 400 mostly ordinary men carved the four presidents’ heads into the mountain between 1927-1941. It is quite impressive to learn about and see.
Starting just outside the Sculptor’s Studio, there’s the Presidential Trail that gets you up close to the mountain sculpture. It’s a 0.6 mile walk. There are many sets of stairs and it isn’t stroller friendly because of all the stairs. Otherwise, it is a really nice walk.
It was a cool day with an overcast sky, what we considered perfect walking weather. We absolutely loved walking the trail and seeing all the different views of the Mount Rushmore sculpture along the way.
Bravely kept pointing and excitedly saying, “Look! A man! A man!”
There is a really nice and large gift shop near the entrance of the memorial. We picked up some post cards and a Christmas ornament, and the boys got miniature replicas of Mount Rushmore.
Honestly, Mount Rushmore was much more awesome to see in person than we thought it’d be. We did think that it would be cool, but it was even better than we imagined.