The Rod and the Ring: South Dakota day 1

September 4

We awoke in our van to see that the campers and trucks around us in the Walmart parking lot had changed during the night. We wanted to reach Mount Rushmore today by sunrise, as we had been encouraged to do by my good friend Deryl. Because we were so far east in this time zone, sunrise was later than it had been a few days ago when we were in Butte, MT. Yet we lost this advantage and started out a little too late for sunrise at the mountain of the presidents. Some mornings are just harder than others to get up to speed that quickly. My face hurt enough by now that resting my swollen cheek on my pillow required careful placement. I needed mild painkillers so I wouldn't have to deal with the distraction.

We did get to Mount Rushmore ahead of almost everyone else, however, even if the sun did get there before we did. Access to this National Monument is via parking garages that everyone has to pay for (no free pass here!). Our van had enough clearance here, but we drove through and parked under the sun anyway. The day was getting hot already this early in the morning, but being able to get out of this lot was more important to me than having a place in the shade.

Razelle and I had breakfast in the cafeteria. The gift shop had yet to open this early. By the time we finished eating the balcony facing the faces was full of photographers and posing subjects. In no time, after the gift shop opened its doors there were lines at the cash registers.

I walked down a series of steps to the Sculptor's Studio. I mentioned Razelle's disability to the ranger there and she arranged for us to drive in below to a special staff parking lot so Razelle could hear the interpretive talk. I reclimbed the steps and got Razelle into the gift shop for a few significant purchases; then we walked upstream against the onrush of incoming visitors and entered our van, and drove to the special gate where I called the number on the gate, spoke to someone the ranger had spoken to and the gate magically opened.

Razelle was so grateful for this gesture that, after the interpretive talk, she presented the ranger with one of our refrigerator magnets. We exchanged email addresses, too.

Then we drove to the Crazy Horse Monument. The admission price there was a little steep, but I understood why that was. This project is a private undertaking and is only financed by those who visit. Again, the crowd was thick. I dropped Razelle off and found a great spot to park. We entered and watched the film, then went through the museum's halls and gift shop to the restaurant. They had bison stew and bison burgers on the menu.

We tried to take pictures of each other with the sculpture of Crazy Horse against the sculpted mountain, as it looks today, but so many other people were doing the same that we needed to be assertive to accomplish this. In the gift shop I finally found a dream-catcher worth buying. I also bought a refrigerator magnet with an appropriate slogan. It says, "Never forget your dreams."

We left Crazy Horse and drove back past Mount Rushmore, and past Keystone to a tunnel through the mountain. Razelle and I took turns posing with this tunnel. It goes together with other tunnels we've passed through on our journeys. We then continued on to Wall, SD.

The famous drugstore in Wall cannot be adequately described. It is a sprawling complex of shops selling every kind of merchandise you can think off. It has preserved the character of the old west as best it can, and perhaps it has done so with a dollop too much of kitschiness, but, it certainly still draws people off the highway.

I looked for an appropriate carrying case for my GPS here. I showed the shop owner my cloth glove contrivance and he laughed heartily at my ingenuity. But he didn't have anything to replace it, so I regrettably left him without a sale. We didn't drink any ice water in Wall, but we did buy four kinds of fudge.

Our last destination for the day while we still had light was the Badlands National Park. We drove the loop road the length of the park. We came across a woman lying face down in her underwear with a man attending to her bottom. I thought he might be applying a tattoo, Razelle thought he may have been removing cactus spines. We'll never know.

We arrived at the visitors' center in time to see the last showing of the interpretive film. It explained everything about the park I had explained to Razelle earlier as we drove, but it did it better and with visuals. The evening light made some of the colors more vivid, but, as with the Painted Desert, by the time we reached the far end of the park where the formations were most dramatic, we were already seeing those colors fade in the light of the growing dusk. We left the park, returned to the interstate and drove into the darkening prairie. By the time we crossed the Missouri River, we saw it with moonlight glistening off its broad expanse. It was a beautiful sight. I drove on, now within the Central Time Zone, all the way to Mitchell, SD. We drove past agricultural land so full of night-flying insects that I had some difficulty seeing through their dashed signatures on my windscreen. Their remains on the glass couldn't be entirely removed by my wipers. We reached Mitchell, SD later than anyplace else yet on this journey across America. We were starting to make Walmart a habit; the one in Mitchell was our third night in a row where we ended our day of travel at this refuge by the road.

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RAZELLE'S PHOTOS OF THIS DAY