The Colorado Adventure

So, after James’s cross country flight we loaded up the car and got on the road. I guess I rushed the kids too much because travel bunny and Mr. otter got left behind, which is a shame because they have never been to Mt. Rushmore, oh well.

We got into our hotel just after midnight and promptly went to sleep. We split up boys and girls, so I got stuck with Hannah in my bed, but she wasn’t too bad.

In the morning we awoke to a light snow, some people might think that’s a bad thing, but we thought it was cool.

After breakfast we drove to Mt. Rushmore.

This was the kids and James’ first time seeing it, and I haven’t been in a really long time. After seeing the sculptures depicted in movies and cartoons we were all excited to see them in person.

We prepared for the trip by watching North by Northwest (no really, it was filmed in the area and there is the infamous top of Mt. Rushmore scene.)

As we walked around we kept humming the tune from the tense movies scenes, see video for that.

OMG! Is that Roger Thornhill or George Kaplan on top of Lincoln’s head?

Oh, it’s just Cary Grant! We also read those library books and put together a quick lapbook.

Some things we learned: Mt. Rushmore is part of the Harney peak batholith (igneous rock that is formed from cooled magma deep inside the earth) and is made up of granite and mica, Washington was inaugurated with only 1 tooth in his mouth,

Jefferson wrote over 20,000 letters in his lifetime, Lincoln was the tallest president and Roosevelt was a friend of the sculptor and started the national park system.

Mt. Rushmore was named after a guy who was hiking in the area and told his guide to name the mountain after him (his name was Rushmore, duh.) A historian from SD was the one who contacted Gutzon Borglum and asked him to create sculptures in the hills to bring in tourists. The historian wanted a cowboy scene, Borglum suggested they march democracy across the mount in the form of presidential busts.

The first face of Jefferson was blasted off after the rock was showing signs of breaking. Each face is 60 feet tall, the eyes are 11 feet wide, and Washington was the only figure that was finished the way the sculptor wanted (with a bust portion showing.) Lincoln was never finished due to the US entering WWII in 1941 and money for the project running out.

Borglum chose Washington as a symbol of our country’s founding,

Jefferson for our country’s enlargement,

Lincoln for our country’s unification and

Roosevelt just to piss people off (just kidding, although that last pick was the most controversial, he chose Roosevelt because he was friends with him, for preservation of the country in the form of parks and for the Panama canal.)

Over 400 workers blasted, dilled and chiseled the faces out of granite with no injuries in the 14 years it took to complete.

The carvings are on a scale of 1 inch = 1 foot, but transferring that to the mountain was an amazing feat.

We walked the trail that goes underneath the figures and got some interesting views of each president and the group.

Oh yes, it was still snowing.

We enjoyed the fall colors, the ponderosa pines, a cave and the snow covered spider webs along the way.

We listened to a park ranger talk about the presidents and we ran along the boardwalk through quiet snowflakes.

The pottery studio was closed, but we could see inside and see the model of the carvings. Here is a room that has a generator in it, it was used to power all those jackhammers.

They had a slight problem though, every Monday the power would fail. Someone finally figured out that all the ladies in Keystone were doing their laundry on Mondays and they had electric washers, hence the power outage – they solved it by getting a gas generator as a back up.

Here are Grace and Hannah pretending they’re in the roofless restaurant from the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie.

In the cafeteria they had lights with workers hanging off of bosun chairs.

Back in the visitor center the kids did the Jr. ranger booklet and took the ranger pledge after they got their badge.

The park ranger asked Hannah who her fav president was and she replied Roosevelt. The ranger asked her why and Hannah was like – I need a reason?

Grace rambled off our interesting trivia like Washington having no teeth and a girl named Grace asking Lincoln to grow a beard. Bethany had fun drawing her version of the monument and Joel did his booklet but didn’t turn it in.

In the center we had fun blasting parts of the mountain and learning about the construction of the memorial. See video for the blast.

After one last look we headed out.

We saw some mountain goats on the way and pulled over for the profile view of Washington.

Here’s what it looked like before lunch, nice.

See the blowing snow video below.

We had lunch at Subway and got back on the road for Cheyenne. I wanted to walk the trail that went by Crazy horse, but it was snowing too hard. We had our sights set on Olive Garden in Cheyenne and the snow turned to fog and rain as we left South Dakota.

Now we’re back home, that was an awesome day rushing around at Rushmore.

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