Mount Rushmore

It seems I forgot to post the links to my Mount Rushmore pictures yesterday, which is fine since the light was better this morning so I took new ones. Like I said, we were too cheap to pay the $10 to get into their parking lot and visitor’s center, mostly because we have the National Parks annual pass and we were annoyed that Mount Rushmore parking was not included. Plus, we figured the $10 was just for the history lesson about who made Mount Rushmore and why, which is probably accessible online for free.

After our morning drive by of Mount Rushmore, we started onwards towards Yellowstone. The trip across Wyoming was scenic — there were no real cities, just lots of rolling hills and random farms. Lots of cows. We drove through Bighorn National Forest, which was snow capped mountains with lots of pine trees. I enjoyed it because the road into the forest was brick red colored. I think more places should have red roads, it makes it really nice to see the green of the trees, the blue skies and the red road winding up the mountains. Much better than dusty grey with potholes.

We got to Cody, Wyoming, which is the last “big” town before Yellowstone. It has an old western theme going on (so did where we stayed yesterday), except it seems almost legitimate here, whereas Keystone, SD was touristy western. I’m looking forward to visiting Yellowstone tomorrow, even though it’s one of the bigger and more famous national parks, so Travis says it’ll be super touristy and annoying. I hope we see bison.

Here’s a panorama from Badlands that I was too lazy to merge yesterday, as well as some prairie dog pictures (I forgot about the prairie dogs). They were watching the buffalo.

P.S. I hate my laptop.