Mount Rushmore. South Dakota

My expectations for this site were low. I mentioned to some friends before I left for this trip that Rushmore would be on my list of destinations, and they all said that they'd been there and that it was the most disappointing trip they'd ever made. The main complaint was that Mt. Rushmore was a lot smaller than they expected, and that the pictures of it all make it look like it's enormous.

People who said they were disappointed with Mt. Rushmore were all dragged there by their parents, and there was no other destination.

I think I can understand that if I was stuffed into the back seat of a car and driven across the country just to see Mt. Rushmore, I'd probably be pretty annoyed by it. But as one site among many I found it very satisfying, and it stood out as the finest work of art I saw on this whole trip.

The fires in the vicinity were serious. Smoke from the Grizzly Gulch fire in Deadwood covered a lot of the area, but when I was at the Rushmore site the air was smoke-free. Everywhere else along the drive up to Rushmore was a thin layer of smoke, just enough to give me a headache.

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