Our last day of touring was today, starting with a long, steep climb up Iron Mountain Road for some more grassland and long distance views of Mount Rushmore followed by a ride up to the mountain’s base.

But first, some details from yesterday that I left out. We stayed last night at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park. It was built in 1921, burned down 73 days later, and was promptly rebuilt. It served as the summer White House for Calvin Coolidge in 1927 and for Dwight Eisenhower in the 50s. It has a great dining room where I had elk osso buco for dinner. It would be a great place to stay while exploring the park at length.

This morning we went up Iron Mountain Road, a challenging climb with several views of Mount Rushmore (named after a new York lawyer, oddly enough) and some quirks of its own such its pigtail bridges.

One of the tunnels frames the monument nicely.

Then you descend and climb back up to the monument itself. It is, indeed, monumental. The heads are 60 feet tall!

It’s surprising how many changes were made to the sculpture during construction. For instance, Jefferson was originally meant to be on Washington’s left (from our perspective) but the stone wasn’t adequate. After they had already created most of the face they blasted it off and moved him to the right of Washington.

Then it was downhill to Keystone and back uphill to Hill City, the same place we stayed 3 nights ago.

Tomorrow is a mostly downhill coast back to Rapid City where the fellowship will disband. Home Sunday.