6-28 Rock On

We covered a lot of ground today, both above and below the earth’s crust. On our way to Mt. Rushmore, we saw the work-in-progress that is the Crazy Horse Memorial. Not a whole lot happening there other than his face so far, but it should be pretty epic when it is done.

Mt. Rushmore looked as iconic as all the pictures make it out to be. It is pretty inspiring to see four giant heads carved into the side of a mountain. 

From there we went underground, visiting the Wind Cave National Park not far down the road. This is the 5^th longest cave system in the world, consisting of around 130 miles of known passages and still finding more.  We took one of the five offered tours and got to see a lot of the most prominent traits of the cave system, such as box work, frost work, and popcorn.

Frost work

Box work

Popcorn

The Badlands were our home for the night. The whole drive there looks like simple prairie until it drops off into the rock and mud formations that created the formations. It was like driving through an alien landscape. I did hear one man say that they filmed the asteroid scenes of the movie Armageddon at the Badlands. Peering out at the landscape we spied a female bighorn, one of only about 100 at the park that are being reintroduced to the area. Sadly, we didn’t see any rattlesnakes (sorry Eli).

Today we officially saw every US license plate, finally spotting Kentucky after a long search. We also got 5 Canadian provinces checked off as well. High-fives all around.