Vacation: Chapter Two - The Heads

After seeing President's Park, we headed South to "The Heads," a title affectionately given to Mt Rushmore by a couple of female Harley riders. I'm assuming they meant Mt Rushmore, since the two were FEMALE HARLEY RIDERS, the only head they would be interested in going down to would be the famous monument.

Anyways, we took the drive to The Heads, and saw the beauty that is Rushmore. It's amazing that something that massive and accurate was completed in a time without computer-aided drafting, or any of the other tools and advances of present day man. Again, I highly recommend seeing this monster of a monument.

We made a quick trip to the gift shop, and then to the Mt Rushmore Ice Cream station. Becky got the chocolate-vanilla swirl cone that wasn't swirled...it was one cones worth of chocolate ice cream on one side of a regular sized cone, and a cones worth of vanilla on the other. A two headed cone!! This thing was mammoth. It was so big, Japanese tourists were stopping to take pictures by the "Great Cone Monument." It truly was a momentous cone.

After Rushmore, we headed to the town of Keystone, where we played a quick game of Mini-golf (we tied, which was a shock to me, cause Becky can throw down on the Putt Putt course!!), and saw the Presidential Wax Museum. Pretty cool, but they give you these wands that you have to manually type in the number of the wax scene you are looking at, and some A.D.D. must have kicked in, cause I only finished one full speech. BORING!! And I actually like presidential history!!

Next, we crossed the street, took the ski lift up the side of the mountain, and rode the Presidential Slide down. I was scared, Becky, of course, was not. She whipped down the mountain like a hot knife through butter, and had to wait for the fat boy to loosen his death grip from the brake.

We then scoured the town for a hotel to stay at. Foiled by Sturgis. The Super 8 motel had jacked their prices to $140 per night...for a SUPER 8?!? I mean, come on!! We traveled to Rapid City, and found a room for $80. It was the next to last room, and the guy at the desk told me the room would spike to $220 the next night. Then he proceeded to tell me all about his incounter with Tom Daschle (apparently Tommy-boy wanted our friendly un-hygentic hotel jockey to run for Congress...but "why would I want to lower my standards?" the hotel jockey asked...yeah, soap, damn those standards!!) and his dislike of John Kerry.

FRIDAY:

Leaving town on Friday not only gave us the chance to miss the Sturgis hotel price wars, it also gave us the chance to get home Saturday, thus giving us a day to recover from our vacation. (yes, recover from vacation...you drive 2500 miles and tell me you don't need some recovering!) Our plan was simple. 90 east to 29 south to 70 east. Cake. Well, Becky had the wheel, and I had the atlas...and an idea.

to be continued...
(next...the journey home)