July 8

Number of miles traveled: 418
Start: 9:58a MDT - Rapid City, SD
Finish: 9:19p MDT - Fort Collins, CO
Stops: Mt. Rushmore (Keystone, SD), Crazy Horse (Custer, SD), Carhenge (Alliance, NE)

First stop of the day was Mt. Rushmore, which required us to pay to see our own federal land. Oh well. We've all seen it, so I won't bore you with the pictures. I will let you know that Craig and Dwight got themselves in trouble for mocking certain state's flags, six "states" are added to get the flag area work to a divisible-by-four number, and this is yet another tourist attraction that is incomprehensible to anyone under 8. My mother dragged me here when I was 5, and I don't remember a thing about it other than the rain.

Next was a trip to the Crazy Horse Memorial in ironically named Custer County, SD. This has been a work-in-progress since 1948, originally just by one man, then by his sons, and now they have a small crew working on it. There is no timetable to finish this thing, but I would guess probably around 2035. The pictures on the right depict what it looks like now (or at least it did on July 8) and a 1/34 scale model of what it eventually will look like.

The final tourist stop on the day was Carhenge in lovely Alliance, Nebraska. This is a true-to-size replica of the actual Stonehenge in England, except with grey cars. Since I was last there 10 years ago, it seems that local druids have sort of taken over the place. There's now an extra set of cars representing "The Ford Seasons", a set of three bells and one car had a set of offerings that I haven't been able to figure out their druid counterpart. Also there was a station wagon redecorated to represent a covered wagon of days gone by.

I would like to apologize for any bad things my travel partners said about the state of Nebraska during our trip through. Since there is no Interstate on the western side of the state, all of our travel save the last 30 minutes in the state were done on U.S. and State highways. Apparently this bored them to no end for the four whole hours they were in the state. We then made it into Wyoming, which is up their on the boring scale, Craig got to eat something in Wyoming, and we made it to Ft. Collins, where I lived for 2.5 years. I promptly got lost. We also ate dinner at Sonic Drive-In, which finally allowed the people who have seen national advertising for a regional chain to see what the fuss was about.

I can only relay this info second-hand, since I was not their to witness the incident. Apparently, while cleaning out the car, Craig came upon a hat, looked at the back, and saw the 'N' for Knowledge. Freaking out, possibly because of his recent time in the Cornhusker state, he said "who bought the Nebraska hat?" Dwight pithily reminded Craig that "you did." Craig at that point needed to be reminded of every purchase he made.