2011 New York Trip-Day 5 – 07/24/2011 / 74992 / 12:55-1:13pm

2011 New York Trip-Day 5 – 07/24/2011 / 74992 / 12:55-1:13pm

I felt kind of cheated.  I would have been happy getting a picture from the driveway leading to the ticket booths.  The visitor center is a mile away, so an extra couple of hundred yards would not have affected my pictures.  But they have “No U-Turn” signs posted once you can see Crazy Horse from your car, so you are kind of stuck.  The scope of Crazy Horse is amazing.  It was kind of disappointing – at least to me – that it has so much more work to be done.  The visitor center is a full mile from the actual figure.  The have bus rides to get closer – but they were closed today because of blasting being done.

Upon further reflection and consultation with my “Off The Beaten Path” book, I decided to skip the Buffalo Interpretive Center and head straight for De Smet, SD – where Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up.

2011 New York Trip-Day 5 – 07/24/2011 / 74976 / 12:00-12:30

I noticed a sign a few miles before Mount Rushmore for the Big Thunder mine.  Now my question: is the Disney ride named after the actual mine or is the mine named after the Disney ride?

Not sure if the revisit was worth it.  Yesterday when I left, my finely honed sense of direction had me leave in the opposite direction than I wanted.  Today, I thought I would be clever and leave in the correct direction – well, I did the same thing that I did yesterday.  BUT – this time it turned out that this was the direction the GPS wanted me to go.  So I went the right way for the wrong reason.