The Drive to Mt.Rushmore

Hold on to your britches this post will make you laugh them off. So we headed out towards Mt. Rushmore and according to the GPS it was only to take us about six hours. We were doing pretty good until about lunch time. We needed to find somewhere to stop. We went through a town called Valentine,NE (yes they had hearts everywhere) the street signs were red, hearts painted on the sidewalks, and business had hearts all over there buildings. We thought that we might stop here but then decided to drive to the next town. The only thing we found before our next turn off was a little gas station that you could not even tell if it was opened or not. Dirt parking lot, and a bunch of homeless looking Indians(I have nothing against Indians, you just see a lot of them around those parts) standing around on the side of the building. Needless to say I do not think they had much to eat. So we pulled over under this shade tree and fixed some sandwiches fast. I had packed a cooler with food. The whole time we were fixing our food the people sitting on the side of the building were staring at us. Ernie kept saying hurry up before they all come over here. Remember no one has a clue as to where we even are and here we sit in the middle of NO WHERE fixing some sandwiches. I was thinking to myself that maybe this is how people disappear from this earth. It was a little scary!


So, we have our food and off we go again. We kind of went off the main HWY to go through the Badlands. Bad choice!! We were driving through a Indian reservations. We came upon some road work that they were doing themselves. Had to stop on the road for about 20min. We passed several cars and trucks with kids and adults hanging out all over the vehicle.(my kids had several questions as to why they were not in there seat belts) Then we got pulled over by a really nice Indian res. police officer. They had know speed limit signs so we were going 66 in a 55. He took our info. came back and told us he would save us some money and only give us a warning. Thank you God! "He asked where we were headed" and we told him. He says "Oh you should go this way and you will not have to pay to drive through them and you will get a good look" (the Badlands is a national park) We thought why he was really nice. So we head out. We came upon the turn off that we had chosen before the nice police officer gave us different directions. Another bad choice!! We are driving along a we hit a pheasant. Ernie sees a piece of our car go flying off into the ditch(the cut out of where a fog light would of been). So we turn around and go looking for it. (Ernie is for sure it probably would cost us about $200 to replace it). I am suppose to be looking out the window(not having a clue what is is that I am looking for). We have no luck so we have to pull over and he gets out and starts walking the road. He is having no luck so then I finally get out and start looking and my Mom drives along side until we finally found it.

Poor Bird. Ernie snapped the part back on and off we were AGAIN!

We finally start to get into some of the Badlands but, should be of know surprise by this time we realize that we are missing most of them due to the road that the "nice police officer" told us to take. The really big ones were off in the distance to our right.

Oh well! We finally get into Keystone,SD (a town about two miles from Mt.Rushmore) it only took us about 10 1/2 hours verses the 6 hrs. that it should of taken. We find a hotel that was nice and got all checked in.

Stay tuned there will be more to come about this trip!