Day 18: Silverthorne, CO to Hot Springs, SD 512 miles

Another big day and I'm back on my own. We took our time getting going this morning as Paul wasn't due back at the motorcycle rental shop until around 10 and it would only take us a little over an hour to get there. We took the same route we did on Friday, I-70 out of the mountains to US-6. We got there a little early as Paul needed to change out my radio mount for another GPS mount. My Zumo died 4 days before I left when we rode through a torrential downpour during the Minuteman 1000. I have been using Paul's Zumo for my trip. It worked fine until a little ways out of Santa Fe when the audio quit. Since then it has totally died twice, but we managed to get it to restart by taking the battery out and doing a "hard reset" (but still no audio). Obviously, it can't be depended on to navigate, so I also have a little handheld unit and I have backup in the form of old fashioned paper maps.

Paul got organized and packed and took a cab to a shipping place to send his gear home. He then got himself to the airport to find his flight was delayed 1.5 hours. Fortunately, they held his connection in Chicago, and last I heard he was in the car on the way home from Hartford.

I meanwhile, was riding north and a little east. I had figured out that it was only a little over 300 miles from Denver to Mount Rushmore, so early this morning I found a place to stay near the National Monument and made a reservation. Hotels in the surrounding area are very full on this Saturday night. I drove through northern central Colorado and into Wyoming on I-25. There is a very nice statue of a buffalo set on a hill as you cross the state line. The southeast part of Wyoming starts out quite flat, but eventually the rolling hills start. I turned off on US-85 and continued to head north, then east on US-18. After crossing into South Dakota, the terrain becomes very pretty, with miles and miles of rolling hills which are very green right now. The area is very sparsely populated, but the ranches and homes along the route look quite prosperous. There is a good amount of cattle ranching, but also horses. I turned north on SD-89 which became US-385.

I was passing right by the Crazy Horse Memorial, so couldn't resist stopping by. It consists of the Monument itself, started in 1948 with hardly any progress to date, the Indian Museum of North America and the Native American Cultural Center. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, in the same area as Mount Rushmore.

It's only a short ride further to Mount Rushmore. I had debated whether it would be more crowded Saturday around dinner time or Sunday early morning. I'm glad I chose the late Saturday for my visit. There were still plenty of people around, but the monument has been designed to accommodate hordes of visitors. You can't see the actual statues until you walk down a long, paved, corridor. There is a good visitors center at the start of the corridor and a very good museum and bookshop set below the viewing pavilion. The statues are very impressive in person, especially the eyes. The technique used to carve them makes them appear very life-like. The National Park Service took over the Monument in 1933 when it was still under construction and the neighboring towns have grown to accommodate about 2 million tourists a year. The ones I passed through are filled with "tourist traps", billboards, and neon signs luring visitors. The monument is terrific, the kitsch isn't. I ended up in Hot Springs, far enough from the Park to have less tourist traffic. It has recently become known as the location of the world's largest mammoth research facility.