May 29, 2013: Custer SD and the Crazy Horse Monument
	May 27, 2013: A Day in Chamberlain
	Return to the Index for Our South Dakota Trip

On Tuesday morning, Guy had some church business to attend to, but about eleven o'clock we got started. Our plan was to check into the hotel in Rapid City and then tour around the area for the afternoon, waiting for Ron and Prudence to arrive. Then we'd have some dinner together and go to Mt. Rushmore for the evening ceremony.

The Trip to Rapid City

Getting to Rapid City was easy- a straight shot west on I-90.

It was a beautiful day for driving, and we had some good conversation as we watched the South Dakota scenery glide by.

At the Black Hills Welcome Center

Driving along, Fred was snapping pictures from the back seat. Central South Dakota is a seemingly endless expanse of rolling hills and farms, and what with the spring rains they'd been having, most everything was very green. I have put clickable thumbnails below for some of the pictures that Fred took:

Between the Badlands, which were off to our south, and Rapid City, we came to one of those tourist "welcome centers" that you usually see at the state line. But this was the Black Hills Welcome Center, with tourist information for the entire Black Hills area, from Devil's Tower down through Custer State Park. We made a pit stop, and I got some photos of the concrete "teepee-like" structure. Also, built into the front wall of the center was an interesting carved concrete plaque with the image of Mt. Rushmore on it.

By about three in the afternoon we were checking in to the hotel I'd found for the five of us.

The Microtel was located just northeast of downtown Rapid City, right near I-90. It was a pretty central location, and from what I could see on their website, a pretty nice place. That's what it turned out to be- a pretty nice place with a really great breakfast.

I got three rooms checked in, and then Guy, Fred and I went off to get a late lunch and drive around the Custer area for a while, waiting for Ron and Prudence who, their phone calls seemed to indicate, would arrive about five.

We decided to drive down the Rushmore Highway to the town of Custer, to walk around and visit the Ken's Minerals again- the place where I'd gotten a bunch of nice rock specimens a few years ago. As we were driving through town to get to the highway, we found a little sandwich place where we stopped for a sandwich and a cookie before heading on down towards Custer.

In Custer, South Dakota

It was getting cloudy when we set out from the hotel for an afternoon drive. After stopping for our sandwich, we headed south on the Mt. Rushmore highway, angling off to head down to Custer, SD. We would probably be visiting the town tomorrow with Ron and Prudence, so we didn't spend a lot of time here. I did want to show Guy the painted buffalo that are all over town; you may have seen them before in this photo album.

All of the buffalo are the same size, and they are placed all over downtown Custer. We saw almost all of them some years ago. Each painted buffalo is done by a different artist. One of the ones I showed Guy, entitled " Riders on the Storm" was done by a Colorado artist. You can read the sign that describes the artist and his inspiration for the work if you click here.

We spent a bit of time in downtown Custer, dodging the light sprinkles that were coming down, and then headed east to drive through Custer State Park.

On our way east, we stopped at Ken's Minerals, the same placed we'd stopped on our last visit here. Then, I picked up a number of very pretty crystal specimens for my study, and that's also where I found the Mesohippus skeleton in matrix that I got for my sister as a Christmas gift that year. (He had some new fossils, but no horses this time.)

We all wandered around inside, and I found some additional pieces to add to my collection. Both Guy and Fred also found some nice rocks to take home as souvenirs.

I'd called Prudence a couple of times to monitor their progress, and now it looked as if we should head back to Rapid City to meet them at the Microtel. So we drove east through Custer State Park to the highway back to the city.

The weather was not very good, and it was difficult for Fred to get any good pictures, so we'll wait until tomorrow and see if the weather improves.

Dinner in Rapid City

When we got back to the Microtel, we found Ron and Prudence in the process of checking in. Once they got settled, we all headed off to downtown Rapid City for dinner.

Ron had already scoped out a place he could go to have a cigar and where Prudence could have some wine before dinner; the desk clerk recommended The Tinder Box, downtown on 7th street just south of Main. Getting there was pretty easy, and there was plenty of street parking.

Both The Tinder Box and the restaurant we ended up at were in the same block downtown.

At the Tinder Box, we got some glasses of wine and sat down at a table outside so Ron could have a cigar- one of his favorite pastimes. It was a warm but pleasant evening, and sitting outside was nice. I got the picture you see at right, of course, and between Fred and I we got a couple more. Fred had me get into a picture, and you can see that picture here. And he got what I think is a particularly good one of Ron Ruckman and Guy, and you an have a look at it here.

While we were sitting there, I happened to notice that there was an advertisement for a store no longer there that was painted on the brick just inside an alleyway across the street. I remembered the name of the store from when I was growing up, so I asked Fred to cross the street with me so I could get a picture of him and the painted sign. Have a look at the picture if you, too, remember Ben Franklin stores.

Sitting downtown we also noticed that like Custer and its buffalo sculptures all over town, Rapid City also has a sculpture program. Spread out over downtown, usually at the four corners of an intersection, there are bronze sculptures of U.S. Presidents.

Rapid City calls itself the "City of Presidents," a series of life-size bronze statues of our nation’s past presidents along the city’s streets and sidewalks. The City of Presidents project began in 2000 to honor the legacy of the American presidency. Each of the sculptures is privately funded, and the pattern of placement was chosen to maintain a coherent structure and eliminate any sense of favoritism or political gain. We saw quite a number of them but, even though there was a planned walk that you could take to see and read the inscriptions on all of them, we didn't do that. They weren't as colorful as the Custer buffalo or as varied as the Boston Freedom Walk, so we contented ourselves with pictures of some of them. You can use the clickable thumbnails below to see the pictures we took.

From the Tinder Box, we headed north on 7th street and then turned right on main, going partway down the block to the Delmonico Grill for dinner. The weather seemed threatening, but we hoped that it wouldn't spoil our visit to Mt. Rushmore after dinner. We had a nice meal at the Delmonico Grill, and then came back to the car for the trip down to the monument. On the way, we passed an alley with an amazing amount of colorful graffiti.

The Evening Lighting Ceremony at Mt. Rushmore

From downtown Rapid City, we just took the Rushmore Highway all the way south to the Monument.

When we arrived, we followed the signs to the parking garage; there were quite a few people arriving for the ceremony, but we had no problem finding a place to park. Leaving the parking structure, all traffic is funneled up a broad set of steps to the main entry for the Memorial. Walking into the Memorial through these first arches, you pass the information center (ranger station) and then walk down towards the next archway at Borglum Court, named, of course, for the sculptor who created almost all of the Mt. Rushmore Memorial. There is a bust of Borglum at one side of the court, just ahead of the gift shop. From here, of course, there are good views of the Rushmore monument.

From here, we continued straight ahead, walking through the Avenue of Flags towards the Amphitheatre. There is a broad plaza above the amphitheatre where many people stand to watch the ceremony. It also accommodates the many people who are going in and out of the two museums that border on the plaza.

While we still had a bit of light, Fred and I stopped to take pictures of the memorial; Fred's turned out very well, and you can have a look at it here. Then the five of us went down into the amphitheatre to take some seats on the cold concrete benches to wait for the lighting ceremony to begin.

When we were here in 2007, we had time before the ceremony to walk around the Presidential Trail. The trail goes from the plaza down and around behind the amphitheatre and then along the base of Mount Rushmore and finally back up to the other end of the plaza. I was sorry that it was too late to take Prudence and Ron along the trail because there are great views of the individual faces from various points along the trail. It is also the best way to gauge the size of the memorial.

The Lighting Ceremony began just after nine o'clock. The first part, which is going on while the light is fading, has a ranger speaking about the history of the country around the monument and a bit about the history of the Memorial. After about 45 minutes, the light has started to disappear completely, and a film began. The film, narrated by Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" fame) begins with an introduction to the establishment of the United States, and some of the history leading up to the decision to establish the Mt. Rushmore Memorial. After a short while, the resonant voice of Mr. Brooks (whose voice reminds one of James Earl Jones), takes us through an examination of the Presidents chosen for Mt. Rushmore.

The film is pretty good, and I recall wishing when I was here last time that I could have filmed the entire ceremony. If you want to check out that page and see some of the short clips that I took, you can certainly do so. The best part of the ceremony was coming up.

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Towards the end of the film, a stirring rendition of "America, the Beautiful" is sung to the accompaniment of spectacular views of America itself. It was impossible not to get a bit choked up, listening to the music and watching the images. But there is more to the ceremony. As "America, the Beautiful" is being sung, Mt. Rushmore is being very slowly lit by what is one of the most sophisticated laser lighting systems in the country. Amost imperceptibly at first, and then very slowly afterwards, the entire sculpture is revealed in the laser light. When it has been fully lit, everyone attending is asked to rise and sing the "The Star-Spangled Banner," while the lights are being brought up full on the Memorial.

My description doesn't really match the emotion of the ceremony; only a movie can come close. I didn't take one this evening, but what I have done is brought forward to this page the movie that I made five years ago. I hope you will take a few minutes and use the player at left to watch it.

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Although I ran out of battery power right towards the end of the national anthem, I hope you find that last movie to have been worth it. This evening, as is apparently always the case, the ranger asks all the veterans to come up to the stage for the lowering of the flag; each of them gets to say their name and where they are from. I've never thought it appropriate to join them, so I stayed in my seat and made a short movie of part of that ceremony, and you can watch it with the player at right.

Fred took a number of good pictures during the lighting ceremony, and I have put clickable thumbnails for four of the best of them below:

During the veterans ceremony, I made my own picture of the lit stage with the lit Rushmore Memorial seemingly floating in the air above it; you can see that picture here.

We left the monument at the completion of the ceremony; I think Prudence and Ron enjoyed it; Guy had seen it before. And of course Fred and I had seen it, but it was just as good the second time around. We returned to downtown Rapid City to stop by a pub Ron had found out about to have something to drink and to plan our next day's activities. We went by the same alley that had all the colorful graffiti, and I took another picture of it that you can see here.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	May 29, 2013: Custer SD and the Crazy Horse Monument
	May 27, 2013: A Day in Chamberlain
	Return to the Index for Our South Dakota Trip