Many beloved American tourist sites share some unmistakable — and seriously unfortunate — features. Most notable is The Tacky Souvenir Shop, which can be found at even the most minor tourist attraction (like a street corner in Arizona). The more famous tourist sites typically boast a restaurant or two, generally providing some level of ambiance to make up for the lousy, overpriced food. But you know a tourist site has made it to the big leagues when it is surrounded by an abundance of completely unrelated and generally meaningless “places of interest”, aka tourist traps. Obviously, the theory goes, if people are willing to pay good money to see one tourist attraction, they’ll surely pay good money to see several more. As they say, there’s one born every minute.
Welcome to Mt Rushmore, truly a work of art, truly a major tourist site, and truly surrounded by an explosion of tourist traps. To be fair, this scene is duplicated at major sites across the country and is definitely not exclusive to South Dakota. We saw plenty of beauty in South Dakota and encountered plenty of friendly folks. But the area around Mt. Rushmore takes its place alongside many of our nation’s most scenic or historic areas (Niagara Falls, Fisherman’s Wharf, etc., etc., etc.) where capitalism seems to have run amok. Here in South Dakota, as we approached Mt. Rushmore, we questioned whether we should skip the four faces and visit instead:
The Reptile Garden
Old MacDonald’s Petting Farm
The Christmas Village
Bear Country USA, or my personal favorite,
Cosmos Mystery Area
Oh yes, we were tempted, but we stayed the course and paid our respects to George, Abe, Tom and Teddy. And they were magnificent. Despite the displays explaining how the figures were carved, I will never understand how it was done. It simply makes no sense that huge chunks of solid rock could be molded into smooth, rounded, detailed, recognizable figures. We couldn’t get close enough to touch them and confirm their authenticity, which leads me to conclude that they are probably computer-generated.
We took a pleasant stroll around the mountain, admiring the view from different angles, and throwing in a few faces of our own.
We could even see George’s profile from our hotel room!
We did succumb to a couple of tourist pleasures. I felt obliged to buy myself a nice pair of Black Hills gold earrings. To make the state’s classic jewelry, gold is mined from South Dakota’s gentle, rolling Black Hills, then mixed with other metals to change the color. The final piece will have three colors: gold, silver, and bronze. Traditional designs typically include a cluster of grapes among leaves.
We sampled the South Dakotan pastry known as kuchen, which is the German word for cake. It took Bill and I back to our days in Frankfurt, where 4:00 in the afternoon was time for kaffe und kuchen. The South Dakotan variety starts with a buttery pie crust, which is topped with a light custard and sprinkled with fruit. A couple of older women we met complained that “they just don’t make decent kuchen in South Dakota anymore”. They recounted tales of watching their mothers make the treats from scratch, a lost art nowadays. Maybe our kuchen was made from a box, but it was plenty tasty nonetheless.
Shockingly, South Dakota is known as the Mount Rushmore State. Well, duh. Overlooking the tacky tourist traps, South Dakota is a lovely state, much like its sibling to the north. Apparently, North and South Dakota had quite an argument during the 1880s when they were being admitted to the Union. Which state would have the honor of joining first? Supposedly, President Harrison had the papers shuffled so he didn’t know which one he signed first. To this day, no one knows for certain which state joined first.
We traveled along I-90, routes 16, 244, 385, and 79 and passed through the famous town of Sturgis, which hosts the country’s largest motorcycle rally each year. Preparations were underway for the big event, scheduled for just after we left — oh darn. We almost bought a t-shirt for one of our motorcycle-riding friends, but we decided that was something he’d have to earn himself.
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South Dakota is also home to a unique prehistoric site. Not far from Mt. Rushmore is The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs. Some 26,000 years ago, a sinkhole developed on the site, which was filled with a warm spring. Several Mammoths wandered over for a drink and slipped into the pool, there to remain for all eternity. Rather unfortunate for them, but highly fortunate for curious modern day humans. When scientists discovered the site in the 1970s, they left everything exactly as they found it, and built a giant building around the find. Very cool. Literally. Scientists were at work excavating the bones, and we were at work admiring the bones, all in the cool comfort of the climate-controlled building.
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In case you’re wondering about our theme song for South Dakota, “Rocky Raccoon” is one of the very few songs we could find that mentions South Dakota, however briefly. And we just couldn’t inflict the Bee Gee’s “Dakota Morning” on you. But we also kind of like the fact that it is fairly irrelevant to our trip, and it was performed not by the original artists, but by a Beatles tribute band. Kind of cheap and tacky, like some of those delightful sites we saw near Mt. Rushmore.
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Travel Tip! Long car rides can be hard on younger passengers, but can lead to some interesting conversations. You’ll have plenty of time to discuss, for example, various ways to make oneself burp on demand.
You’ll also find that the last hour of a long car ride may prove unbearable for the younger riders in the backseat, and even more unbearable for those in the front. This can be easily avoided by 1) letting them out of the car one hour from your destination, 2) arriving one hour early, or 3) leaving the kids at home.
7. South Dakota
Mt. Rushmore