Day 26 - Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

We stayed the night in Wall, SD just outside the Badlands National Park. This morning we visited Wall Drug, the place we saw advertisements starting 350 miles away for. It was such a tourist trap with all the souvenirs and promises for 3 t-shirts for $10, we barely made it out alive! Thank goodness there was Coffee Cabin where we got some surprisingly good coffee to last us the morning of massive souvenir shopping.

We made it to Mount Rushmore by lunch time and it started raining on us the minute we ate our picnic lunch out of the car. Lightly at first and then heavier but we weren't going to leave because of a little rain! We hung out for a while and it blew past us. Last night we saw lightning storms in the distance. It was so awesome! The kids really enjoyed looking for them, except Noah kept missing them and would screech each time we'd say that we saw one. He finally saw one so he was happy.

Mount Rushmore was awesome! The work they did to sculpt and carve and blast it (they used dynamite!) to perfection in the early 1900's is amazing. I'm constantly amazed with the ingenuity and creativity along with the perseverance people have had to make our nation amazing and beautiful.

From the road!!

 Heading in!

 Working together on the Junior Ranger booklets

 Rebekah has her own version

 Trying to explode dynamite

Some of the smaller models used

Kids talking to the Ranger to get their Junior Ranger badge!

4 newest Junior Rangers :)