Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is another place I never thought I would see. We arrived in the evening so we got to see the monument in daylight and then stay on and see this wonderfully patriotic program about the four presidents who are featured in the mountain and then see the whole thing lit up. It's a really beautiful area in South Dakota.

Earlier in the day we were able to drive through Badlands. It's really amazing to see the sandstone structures (much like you would probably see in places in Utah, just different colors) with their horizontal stripes. To me, it was amazing to see how uniform the stripes are. Almost like someone is shining a striped light across all the mountains because the stripes match up so well from formation to formation. It was a great favorite of our kids. It was also the first place we saw prairie dogs and we pulled over to the side of the road and were entertained by them for a while.