Rapid City, SD

September, 2021

One of my bucket list items was to see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The Mount Rushmore National Park is near Rapid City, South Dakota. There are so many things to see in this area, I wished we had spent two weeks there instead of just one. We did our best to see as many as possible.

The day we chose to go see Mount Rushmore was a beautiful day with clear blue skies.

Entrance to Mount Rushmore is free. However, there is a charge for parking. For seniors, it was $5. We parked in the parking garage and made our way to the entrance and the Avenue of flags which displays the flags from all 50 states. We found our state flag of Texas.

Underneath each flag is a plaque with the date the state entered the union and the rank in order of the states joining the union.

At the amphitheater, I took a few more photos of these huge carvings. It was an amazing feat of architecture, sculpture and engineering that took years to complete. It is an iconic American Monument that needs to be preserved.

It wasn’t just a matter of carving a face in the mountain. The sculptor had to choose the best angle so the images would catch the light and cast shadows to show off the carvings. There were “catch light” rocks that made the eyes look real. The rock had to be the right hardness. It took a lot of skill and knowledge to carve this.

I walked down the path to the artist’s studio where the trees nicely frame the monument.

As we drove away from the park we got one more view of George Washington as we rounded a corner.

We went to the evening program. The Ranger told his story about what happened 20 years prior on September 11, 2001, when our country was under attack. The National Parks were closed and then put under high alert for any suspicious activity.

This Ranger related to us that while he was sitting on top of the head of George Washington at night all alone on September 11, looking for planes or anything that looked suspicious, he wrote a script of what he was going to say in his program the following evening. That was the program we got to hear the night after the 20 year anniversary of 9/11.

He told how each of the four Presidents had faced great adversity in trying circumstances that tested them and made them into the great leaders they became. He shared his own story of adversity. He then related those times to the challenges that faced our nation after the attack. Our leaders and our nation overcame adversity and went on to become the most powerful nation on earth. It was very inspiring to hear.