The trip from Sioux Falls to the Mount Rushmore KOA was a challenging one. The wind blew the RV around on the planes and through the Badlands, and it's not a very easy vehicle to keep in a straight line on the best of circumstances.
But, how fun was it to take the family to the world famous Wall Drug! I went in 1991 as a preteen with my family and it looked pretty much the same -- from the miles and miles of roadside signs to the actual building full of the strangest and oddest stuff.
Leah got a cowboy hat (obviously) and Alice and I found gems and minerals, including a very neat pipestone necklace on a leather band. We also spent $16 on donuts ... because we were there and the line for ice cream was too long. (Don't worry, we wore our face masks while browsing around, like nearly 75% of the other customers.)
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Wall Drug
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The campsite at Mount Rushmore was our stop for three days and the site was a popular one -- since it was so close to the monument. Hundreds of RVs and two gathering areas with a kids' area that included scheduled activities, and a few shops for ice cream and coffee. Alice liked the horses you could rent for a trail ride.
I don't want to get on a soapbox here, but I was pretty disappointed by Mount Rushmore. You don't need much of an education to know that they put this monument on sacred Lakota tribal lands and it's kind of a GIANT slap in the face to native people. And I recall it being a more prominent story when I first visited in 1991. Not so now. No mention really at all of the horrific history of a slaughter of innocent people, as settlers and the US army stole land from east to west. In fact, the Custer state park is still named after such a unrepentant killer. I'm not saying we should celebrate or tear the whole thing down. What's done is done and we need to be better at understanding and accepting our past for what it is in the stark light of day, instead of sweeping it under the rug. There. Rant over.
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