South Dakota, Part 3 - A Monument-al Day [240511]

We had been watching the weather forecast all week, looking for a day with clear skies at both sunrise and sunset to visit Mt. Rushmore for photos.  Saturday was that day.

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Our 3:50 a.m. alarm Saturday morning got us up bright and early for our drive to watch the sunrise at Mt. Rushmore.  Since it was still dark out, we decided to forego the latter half of the Iron Mountain Road (the "fun" part with the narrow tunnels and pigtail bridges) and take the cutover through Keystone instead, arriving at the monument just after the 5 a.m. opening time.  There was only one other photographer there at that time of the morning, so things were pretty quiet and peaceful.  Tom set up one phone on a tripod at the observation platform to do a "close-up" time lapse of the presidents during sunrise.

He wanted to do a second time lapse from further back, at the beginning of the Avenue of Flags - but although we have two tripods, we only have one phone tripod mount with us.  However, we also have all sorts of tape.  Back in Lampasas he had MacGyver'ed a tape + tripod concoction together to do the parking lot time lapse, and tried to do the same at Mt. Rushmore.  Un/fortunately, he was being "intensely frugal" and re-used the same pieces of tape (yes, he had put them back on the roll to be used again) and one of them wasn't quite as sticky as it was originally, and the phone slowly slipped a bit over the course of the several hour time lapse; but it made for a somewhat interesting/amusing slow pan effect in the end.

For a while we took turns at each end, to make sure no one accidentally tripped/knocked over one of the tripods.  But after about an hour it became apparent that with the meager amount of foot traffic at that time of the morning there wasn't going to be a problem, and Christine retreated to the T42 and went back to bed.  Tom stayed until the shadows cleared Roosevelt's face (around 8:30) before packing things up and heading back for a nap as well.

After breakfast, we emerged from our T42 cocoon again for some views in broad daylight with clear blue skies.

We walked the 0.6 mile Presidential Trail, which takes you to the base of the mountain for views of the presidents from different angles.

The Trail goes by the Sculptor's Studio, which unfortunately wasn't open for tours yet this year.  But we were able to peek through the windows to see the original plaster scale model used in the creation of Mt. Rushmore.

As we left Mt. Rushmore, we stopped at the parking area by the side of the road where you could see a profile view of Washington.

Because of road closures, we had to take a somewhat circuitous route to get to the Crazy Horse Memorial that took us back through Keystone again.  Along the road was some impressive chain saw art for sale.

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A 45 minute drive brought us to the Crazy Horse Memorial, where (after having lunch in the T42) we started with the orientation movie and then "skipped ahead" and went straight to the Viewing Veranda to see the monument in person.

We then toured the Covered Porch, Sculptor's Original Family Log Home, and the Carving Gallery.  Posters on the various walls showed the progress made over past decades, but given that they only have 18 people working on the monument full time (an all-time high) we're pretty sure that it's not going to be completed within our lifetimes - or even our kids'.

The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation has more ambitious goals than the existing center and the in-progress carving.  They eventually plan a large campus with an Indian University and other support facilities; the Gallery contained a model of what they envision the site to eventually look like.

The Sculptor's Workshop contained an interesting mix of the the sculptor's other works, as well as an eclectic selection of other items the sculptor collected over the years.

We also browsed the Native American Education & Cultural Center, before going through the exhibits of the Indian Museum of North America in reverse, due to our odd navigation choices.

The Wall of Windows is intended to provide one's first view of the mountain, but it ended up being one of the last things we saw.  It was a gorgeous view, though.

There were some pretty impressive sculptures outside the buildings as well.

Since our plans were to return to Mt. Rushmore after dark, we had dinner in the Crazy Horse parking lot before driving back.  While the Crazy Horse Memorial fit nicely on our roof, we decided not to leave with it, as it would prevent us from fitting through the Iron Mountain Road tunnels on the way back to camp later.

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We arrived back at Mt. Rushmore around 8:30 p.m., and were surprised to find that there was finally someone in the parking lot's R.V. lane pay booth (on our prior two visits the booth was empty, and on our first visit we had to ask at the Visitor Center how to pay for parking).  There also was, for the first time, someone directing traffic and telling you where to park - which we thought odd, since there were still free spaces everywhere at that time of night.  Very bizarre that they concentrate their parking lot manpower after dark there.  But we spent a goodly amount of time taking night photos of the memorial that night.  It was interesting to see how the iPhone...

...and the Nikon chose to interpret the scene slightly differently.

Christine was doing her best "Frank" impression that night (private family joke 😉).

It was close to 10 p.m. by the time we left Mt. Rushmore and we were hoping for a quick, uneventful drive back down to the valley to our campsite.  But the bison - who we assumed would all be asleep in some field by then - had other ideas.

There had been a lot of talk in the prior days about the auroras potentially being visible in our area, so we took a quick look when we finally got back to camp.  There was a faint, barely perceptible glow in the sky and we made a half-hearted attempt at a photo with Tom's phone, which insisted there was nothing out there to focus on.  Aurora?  Aliens?  We had no idea, but didn't much care at that point and toddled off to bed... 🥱