Rapid City/Mount Rushmore - 2,865 miles

We left Three Flags RV Park and all of its road and train noise and headed 8 miles down the road to a nice, clean, quiet place: Camp Wally. We will spend the night then take off for Interior, SD visiting Wall Drug Store and Ellsworth AFB on the way there.

We finally got down to see Mt Rushmore today. We didn't stop in Keystone, a first class tourist trap and proceeded to the park immediately. We stopped in one of those semi-tacky lots-of-road-signs places on the way to Mt Rushmore and did all of our Christmas shopping. Just kidding. We did find some neat things we have never seen before.

We thought our National Park Pass would work at Mt Rushmore but the park is run by a non-profit company and they do not charge an entrance fee. They charge a parking fee. Big whoop. It was worth it but it was annoying.

We checked out the Gift Shop first of course. I added to my tee-shirt collection, got some post cards, and a Sibley Bird Book. Karen got a nice ring.

We walked the Presidential Trail that circles in front of the monument on nice shaded walkways. We visited the sculptor's workshop where there are scale models of the faces on the monument. These are 1/10th the size of the actual ones. The original plan was to do waist-high figures but they ran out of money. We enjoyed the visitor's center where one of original workmen was doing a book signing.

We drove through Custer SD and stopped at quilt shop. Most quilt shops are run by neat freaks and are clean and well-organized. Quilt makers have to be organized and detail oriented so it is understandable. This shop was unusual in the fact that it was dirty and a total mess.

We stopped at the Wood Carver's Museum but decided not to put up the bucks to go in. Same with the Crazy Horse Monument. We didn't do the wildlife tour of Black Hills State Park either. We have seen lots of bison this summer. We saw two large bulls along the road through the park along with 4 flocks of turkeys.

Tonight I had a nice chat with a former mechanic from Maine who is parked near us in Camp Wally. He had his TV on but his RV's generator wasn't running. That meant that he was running his TV using his house batteries (RV's have 2 sets of batteries - coach and house) for power. He had to be using an inverter which changes direct current to the alternating current most electronic devices use. We have never used our inverter because I didn't have a clue how to use it. He showed me what he was doing and after a long chat I came back to the RV and hooked up the TV, the TiVo and the DirecTV box to the inverter. It worked. Now we do not have to fire up the generator to watch TV. The generator uses diesel fuel and is somewhat noisy so we usually didn't use it. Some campgrounds outlaw generator use after 8:00pm.

Looking forward to moving on in the morning. We have seen our last mountain and our last pine tree until we get to New Mexico next month sometime. The Great Plains are beautiful too. Mountains are more dramatic and varied. We have seen some amazing sights the past 3 months.

Lots of RVs are pulling into this parking lot now. We are almost totally surrounded now. There were 12 RVs here last night. It is great that Wal-Mart lets RVers use their parking lots this way. We will pick up trash in the lot to repay them somewhat. It saves us lots of money to dry camp.