The Ambitious Odometer: {Road Trip} Day Seven - Mount Rushmore and The "Street Corner" Presidents

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

{Road Trip} Day Seven - Mount Rushmore and The "Street Corner" Presidents

I have to admit that Mount Rushmore is one of the places that I've always wanted to visit...

and with B's interest in the presidents still prevalent, we decided that this landmark should be one of the most important stops on this summer's family road trip...

We all enjoyed the visit, but B kept walking around ~ "This is the best day ever. This is like a once in a lifetime experience! Thank you for planning this trip for us, Mom." He is a big ball of energy, and there are definitely plenty of days when he wears me thin, but he really is such a sweet, sweet soul, and he loves, loves, loves his presidents and his states and capitals!

We walked the Presidential Trail along the base of the mountain...

and continued to the sculptor's studio where we got to see the model that was made before work on the mountain began. It was so interesting to learn about how the sculpture was created, and it was so interesting to learn that approximately 400 workers worked on the sculpture and that about 90% of it was done with dynamite of all things!

{Working on their Junior Ranger badges, getting some questions answered}

As a native Georgian, I was surprised to learn that the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was actually the original sculptor of Stone Mountain, though he left a couple of years into the project...

One of the highlights of the morning was getting to meet one of the original 400 workers, a driller, Nick Clifford...

From Mount Rushmore, we headed into Rapid City to grab a late lunch at Firehouse Brewing Co...

and took a tour of the street corner presidents, stopping to snap a photo with each and every single one, of course...

A big thank you to good college friend J for sending me an article on them earlier in the year. They are honestly so spread out, taking up about 10 blocks or so up and down (on both sides of) two different streets, we might not have caught on that they were ALL there had we not known about it in advance...

This pretty much sealed the deal on making this a fabulous day in B's book!

We couldn't leave South Dakota without swinging by the capitol building in Pierre. We woke up a slumbering B so that he could run up those steps. Who knows when (or IF) he'll ever be back in South Dakota again!