June 4, 2008: South Dakota (....meh)

Today we rolled through South Dakota. Now there isn’t a whole lot of stuff in South Dakota. There are some national parks and caves in the southwest. There is also a well-known motorcycle rally in Sturgis.

But we did stop at Mt. Rushmore to see four of our greatest leaders: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Although we have all seen this image many times in media, it was awesome to see the monument in person. Click below for a larger view:


We also drove past the Indian leader, Crazy Horse monument. We just looked at it as we passed by on the highway, we didn’t go up to the visitors center. This actually is a work in progress, but you can see most of the head and it’s easy to envision what the final concept will look like.

Once you get east of there, there is not much going on in South Dakota. It is so empty that a drugstore has become an attraction. Wall Drugstore, in Wall, SD is a giant country western themed set of stores. They have a few hokey things like a big animated dinosaur, fountains, and other things.


Through some GPS/Priceline confusion we got a little a little bit off track when we booked our hotel and ended up in the state capital of Pierre. Again, not much here.