Road Trip Diaries

On I-90 yesterday, we saw many, many roadside adverts for "Wall Drug". We didn’t know what it was. Apparently it was "world famous". It turned out that even Road Trip USA found it worthy of a mention, even though its dozens of miles from any of the documented routes.Our motel had a menu from the Wall Drug restaurant. We decided to have breakfast there, to find out what it was all about.

It turns out that Wall Drug is "world famous" because it advertises on a busy road. Basically, in the 30s, every drug store provided free iced water to anyone who popped in — a sort of loss leader — but Wall Drug transformed their failing business in the tiny Depression-hit town of Wall into a thriving haven for road travellers, simply by advertising their free iced water and their 5c coffee. Over time they’ve expanded into a kitch tourist trap that handles 20,000 visitors on a busy day.

We had an acceptable buffet breakfast, bought a fridge magnet, and actually used it as a drugstore (some oral anaesthetic). We very quickly admired its jackalope (a model, not the real thing alas) and its six foot rabbit.

I was amused to see some graffiti in a phone booth: "trust Jebus".

With that, we made haste for Keystone, and Mount Rushmore. On the way, we saw many roadside adverts for all kinds of tourist attractions. This region wants your tourist dollar badly. Wild West villages; Gold mines; caves; all those things were there to be seen, but we didn’t have time for them.

However, we weren’t able to ignore the adverts for the Cosmos Mystery Spot. I found it on the map, and it was on our route. We resolved to go there. Before we got there, the heavens opened, and we were driving through torrential rain again. When we bought our Cosmos tickets, it was pouring. Fortunately, when the cheeky ginger kid leading our tour took us out, it had eased off to a gentle drizzle.

The Cosmos Mystery Spot is one of only a few such unexplained places in the world. Another is the House of Mystery in Hungry Horse, Montana. which we enjoyed very much. Unfortunately the cheeky ginger kid had prosaic explanations for some of the phenomena. Maybe South Dakota law forbids lying about tourist attractions…

We chose to ignore his explanations, and instead believe that unexplained phenomena were messing with gravity.

The cheeky ginger kid advised us not to go to Mount Rushmore, because he reckoned we wouldn’t be able to see anything through the weather. We agreed, but didn’t really have a plan B.

As we left, the rain had stopped, but instead we had about 20 metres of visibility through thick mist. We arrived in Keystone, where we believed Mount Rushmore to be. We looked around, and couldn’t see any mountains through the mist. Not being sure where the faces were meant to be, we decided to eat, then explore our options.

Keystone is not a particularly classy place: it basically exists in order to extract tourist money from visitors to Mount Rushmore. In our case, they fed us in exchange for our money: a burger for Debbie, and a hot beef sandwich for me. It was perfectly nice, but I was a bit disappointed to have Mother’s Pride bread (or somesuch).

Keystone tries quite hard not to mention the fact that Mount Rushmore is a few miles out of town. When we eventually learned this, and that the $8 park admission was valid for a whole year (so if the fog was too much, we could try again tomorrow), we set course for it.

We paid our admission, and looked around. Still there was no monument to be seen. At the main viewing platform, we at last knew where the faces were meant to be.

We took the "Presidents Trail", a walkway that runs closer to the monument, among the rock debris that was blasted from the mountain face, reckoning that the closer we got, the less fog we would have to peer through.

Along the way, we saw a rock in the shape of Richard Nixon’s face, something that’s seldom advertised.

From the closest viewpoint to the monument, we stared, and waited, and stared some more, until eventually we fancied that we might just be able to make out the outline of George Washington’s head.

Wow!

We continued around the trail. A wind rose, and suddenly there was whooping and cheering from the main platform. We turned around and lo and behold, there were four old white men looking down at us from the mountain.

It’s nature’s greatest miracle! However, I’m glad the USA has begun electing its leaders instead of choosing them based on their resemblance to natural rock formations.

There is a nightly lighting ceremony at Mount Rushmore. "A 30-minute program held nightly at the amphitheatre consists of a ranger introduction, the film "Freedom: America’s Lasting Legacy", and then concludes with the National Anthem and illumination of the sculpture".

I’m not sure I could stomach that much patriotism.

The restaurant from North by Northwest is present and correct.

Near the restaurant area were some polling booths where you could nominate your favourite president of all time. I was going to vote for Nixon, as a joke, but you had to provide your name and address, and that was too much hassle. We were taken aback by the results so far:

Dubya must be doing something right…

Next stop was Crazy Horse. Less famous than Mount Rushmore, this is a work in progress that’s been under construction since the forties and when finished will be ten times the size of Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore would fit in Crazy Horse’s head and hair. Pretty impressive.

All this carving things out of mountains lark is pretty nuts. A booklet told us that when the Mount Rushmore project was begun, skeptics thought the result would look incongruous and ridiculous. It goes on to say these skeptics were proven wrong. Newsflash, America! Of course it’s incongruous. It’s as kitch as a row of Flower Fairies lunchboxes, and to build it a big chunk of one of the most beautiful natural areas in the world was destroyed. The same goes for Crazy Horse.

On the other hand, it’s not as if there’s a shortage of natural beauty in this area, and when you drive around the corner, there’s plenty more rocks that have not been carved into anything.

We saw some Indian dancers. The men whirled around like nobody’s business. The girl just seemed to stand there and jig around a bit.

Outside was a statue of some horses having a bit of a kiss and a cuddle.

On leaving, we decided it was cold. We actually rushed to the car to get into its warmth, which makes a change.

We drove on to Custer, where the Rocket Motel won our custom with its neon. The lady was very friendly and helpful too, and the room is nice.

We ate at the Cattleman’s steakhouse opposite the motel — I had sirloin and it was good, and Debbie had stir fried steak for a change. Our waitress was Lithuanian: normally our accent problems are American/English, so this was a change.

Now we’re in the room. Debbie has fetched an ice cream (for herself) and a coffee (for me) from the BP garage next door, and we’re watching American "Hell’s Kitchen". Gordon Ramsay isn’t swearing as much as usual. I’m not certain whether the contestants are celebrities or not, as they were in the British one. I’ve never heard of any of them.

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