Our RV Adventures

Since I’ve gotten so many nice comments about the reposts of our past adventures, I thought I’d repost this one from 2017, our last year of full-time RV travel. Since then we did destination trips to Florida, Alabama, and the Texas Hill Country.

---

June 8, 2017

Which One Is President Rushmore?

Off to do Mt. Rushmore again, we were out the door by 10am, with a stop in town at Wendy’s for a little early lunch since we wouldn’t be eating dinner until about 5pm.

Our first stop, a little before 11, was the Mt. Rushmore Monument itself. Although the monument admission is free, parking is $10, but for seniors, it’s only $5. Nice.

Walking up to the memorial area, the view down the Avenue of Flags is really impressive, framing the mountain perfectly.

And it’s interesting to see all the talus that was left over from the carving.

A couple of days ago, I thought to ask Google who Mt. Rushmore was named for. Was it already named, or was it named for someone after it was finished?

Turns out it was named for Charles Rushmore when he visited the area in 1885. A New York lawyer, he was in the area checking titles for mining claims. When he asked his guide, Bill Challis, what the name was of that mountain, Bill said that it didn’t really have a name, but from now on, they would call it Mt. Rushmore.

Here’s what it looked like at the time.

And over the following years when Rushmore returned on hunting trips every year, everyone kept calling it Mt. Rushmore, until the US government finally recognized the name in 1930, 3 years after the carving had begun. And later, Rushmore made the first large donation, of $5000, to help fund the carving.

But because of this name, apparently the most asked question of Park Rangers at Mt. Rushmore is, “Which one is President Rushmore?” It would have been a lot better I guess if his name had been Charles Washington rather than Charles Rushmore.

I was interested to find out that a lot of things changed along the way during carving. Originally Jefferson’s head was to the right of Washington, but during the carving it was discovered that the rock was in bad shape, so the partially completed head of Jefferson was dynamited and restarted to Washington’s left.

I guess this kind of answers a question I had about the order of the heads. I mean it’s not alphabetical, and it’s not by order of presidency. Otherwise it would be Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and then Roosevelt. So now it sounds like it may be because of what face would fit in what area.

And I was also surprised to learn that originally the figures were supposed to be carved from the waist up, not just the heads, but they ran out of money, Guess they were glad they were working from the heads down, and not the waists up. Otherwise we might have ended up with something like this.

Yesterday, in the middle of dark storm clouds and occasional heavy rains, we drove many of the roads in the area.

We also got this side view of President Washington

Later we headed south down to Custer State Park to drive the Needles Highway, including several more tunnels.

Along the way we pass through the most famous of the tunnels, the Needles Eye Tunnel

Today after leaving the monument, we headed east on 16A to drive Iron Mountain Rd. Along the 18 miles there are 314 curves, 14 switchbacks, 3 tunnels and 3 pigtails. In case you haven’t encountered a pigtail before, it looks like this.

It’s a complete loop, and in fact turns back under itself.

At the bottom of the Iron Mountain, we turned south on the 18 mile Wildlife Loop. Very scenic, but for a long while this guy was all the ‘wildlife’ we saw.

But finally coming over a rise we found 100’s of  buffalo, so many and so spread out, that I couldn’t get them all in the frame.

And as you can see there were a lot of new calves.

Then a few more  miles down the loop we came  across these fellows, though I’m not exactly sure you can call them ‘wild’ life.

They seemed to being used to being feed.

And except for some whitetail deer, that was about it for the wildlife on the Wildlife Loop.

Coming back toward Mt. Rushmore, we drove back up Iron Mountain Rd., enjoying the highlighted view of Mt. Rushmore through two of the three tunnels.

But the third one, the most impressive, I didn’t get because my camera focused on the windshield so the monument was blurry. Sorry.

Finally heading back toward Rapid City, we made stop at Dinosaur Park, located on the highest hill/mountain? in Rapid City. Built by the city in 1936 to capitalize on the tourists coming to the area to see the carving in progress, it’s been a landmark ever since.

In  fact Jan remembers coming here when she was 7 and her father was stationed at Ellsworth AFB, and she was looking forward to seeing it again.

Al least until she saw the stairs leading up to the top.

She said, “I don’t remember any stairs like that.”

I told her, “You were 7. You probably just run up them like they weren’t even there.”

She then retorted, “Well, they’re there now so I’m staying here.”

So I made the trudge to the top.

The things I do so you blog readers don’t have to .

Leaving Dinosaur Park we headed over to the nearby Famous Dave’s BBQ to meet Wil and Cyndy Olsen.

Wil and Cyndy work with Adventure Caravans helping guide RV’ers around the country so we’ve bumped into them at a number of rallies along the way. But this the first time we’ve really had a chance to sit down and spend some time with them.

And what better way to do it than over Famous Dave’s Ribs. Cyndy got the Chicken, while Jan and Wil both got the full rack of St. Louis ribs.

I stuck with my usual three meat combo, with St. Louis ribs, Hot Link Sausage,and Burnt Rib Tips. And as you can probably tell we all had plenty to take home.

It’s hard to beat Famous Dave’s, especially with friends like Wil and Cyndy.

And what’s funny about this is that the people at the table behind them are also RV’ers, though we didn’t know each other.

Saying our goodbyes and safe travels, they headed to Safeway while Jan and I made a Wal-Mart stop before finally getting back to the rig a little before 8pm.

A really nice day.

We have originally planned to see the South Dakota Air & Space Museum, but ran out of  time. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

---

Thought for the Day:

The most expensive thing in the world is a cheap Army and Navy. – Carl Vinson

  

    .

Today, work was just work, with nothing much going on. My new water valve came in, so I’ll probably try to get it installed tomorrow, as well as the hose splitter.

So I thought I’d just repost an oldie but goodie from 11 years ago, our 4th year on the road.

---

May 23, 2011

King’s Canyon and Sequoia Too . . .

We had to get early this morning at 7:30, but it was for a good cause: Our trip down south to King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

But before we left, Jan put some food out for the birds and squirrels. And it turns out we have a another visitor to the food, a resident gopher.

Jan didn’t realize she was dumping the food almost on top of his hole, but he was happy.

We finally headed out about 9 for the 100 mile trip down to the two National Parks.

Our first stop was at a convenience store in Squaw Valley, the same place we stopped last year, for a bathroom stop and a cappuccino.

Then we started the long climb up into the parks, from about 300 ft. in the valley to almost 8000 ft. At about 6000 ft. we started seeing snow again, although not near as much as last year.

The big problem was the fog. It steadily got worse the higher we went. In some places we could only see 20-30 ft. in front of the truck, so it made for really slow going.

We took a bathroom break at the Lodgepole Visitor’s Center and got our National Park Passports stamped for Sequoia, and then head down the road a couple of miles to the General Sherman Tree, by volume the biggest tree in the world

It’s about a half mile walk down the hill to the tree itself

At 275 ft. high, it’s about 2500 years old, and it’s a monster. We didn’t get see the General Sherman last year because the road was snowed in, so we felt lucky this time.

Coming back up to the parking lot we found the fog had really rolled in. And it made the drive back to the King’s Canyon area really dicey. The 26 mile trip took over an hour and fifteen minutes.

We got to the King’s Canyon area about 10 til 3, just in time to get lunch at the café before it closed at 3 pm.

Then after lunch, and getting our Passports stamped for King’s Canyon, we headed a couple of miles down the road to see the General Grant Tree, the second biggest tree in the world.

What’s unusual is that, although the General Grant is second in volume to the General Sherman, at 40 ft. in diameter, it has the biggest base. 40 ft. is the length of our American Eagle coach.

The Gamlin Cabin, shown here, and built in 1872, has served as everything from living quarters for the Gamlin brothers who built it, to a US Calvary storehouse, and then the home of the first park ranger stationed here. And it looks as strong as the day it was built.

Finally leaving the park and heading home, we did see some deer along the way. We had also seen a bear earlier disappearing into the fog, but otherwise it wasn’t a good day for animals.

Except for the gopher, of course.

We finally got home about 7:30 after stopping for cappuccinos.

---

Thought for the Day:

‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd’ – Voltaire

   

   .