Wisconsin or Bust: Wednesday

Wednesday morning I had to do laundry, so I got up after 3 hours of sleep to get a load done before we left. I let everyone else sleep in. And sleep in they did! Sam was the first one up at 9:30, and John slept until 10:30. He needed it.

After we dragged ourselves out of bed and rushed everyone through showers, we headed down to Mount Rushmore.

We figured it would take about an hour to see it, take pictures, and go through the Visitor Center. We took three. There was a lot to learn about. They have a lot of the equipment used to drill and blast the rock and lots of information about the sculptor and the workers. Very, very interesting. Highly recommended.

Here we are!

John and the kids walking toward The Avenue of Flags, with the flags from the states in alphabetical order with the State name, date it entered the union, and the order in which it entered.

One of the interseting things I learned was that no one died while working on the sculpture. They were very safety conscious for the time. I was impressed. Another interesting piece of information, is that the sculptor carefully designed the faces to take on different expressions depending on the time of day and the season. Also, the eyes have a depression for the pupils with a shaft of stone in the middle of the pupil to make the eyes appear to sparkle.

The fifth head on the mountain.

Ruby, being impressed.

Down a ridiculous number of stairs was the Sculptor’s Studio, where you can see the 1/12 scale model used in carving the mountain. They had a clever system of measuring to translate the shape of the model onto the mountain.

The scale model, with a view of the mountain in the upper peaked window. The sun was right there, so it was hard to get a good shot.

Ruby for scale.

After we climbed up (and up and up and up) the stairs, we badly in need of some ice cream. Fortunately, they had it.

The sign says: "President Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and of the first ice cream recipe in America! Come grab a taste of history at the Memorial Ice Cream Shop." And then there's a photo of his ice cream recipe.

We enjoyed our ice cream and squished a penny and got back on the road. Meghan and I traded places and I sat in the back and slept while she sat up front and played navigator. She has a lot of space back there. It was pretty comfy and I got a good nap to make up for my lack of sleep.

I used to think that Nevada across I-80 was the most boring drive in the world, but now I’m thinking that South Dakota on I-90 gives it a serious run for its money. And it takes FOR-ever to get across. We made it to Souix Falls, SD around midnight for our last night on the road!