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andimthedad · 5 years

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Road Trip: Eastward Day 4: Rocks, Rushmore, Badlands, Dignity, and more

This summer, the kids and I embarked on a 10,000-mile cross-country road trip from Washington to Maine and back. Along the way, we got a brief taste of America through landmarks and sights that represent our nation, for better or worse.

Read notes from every day of the trip:

Eastward: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Westward: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

And various posts from the FAQ.

Ken's Minerals & Trading Post, Custer, South Dakota

If you collect rock specimens, shops like Ken’s are irresistible. We hadn’t planned on stopping here, but the massive piles of rose quartz outside caught our attention, especially at a dollar a pound. Inside was a huge variety of specimens, fossils, and locally-made jewelry.

For example, here are a couple of selenite specimens we bought: first, as a sheet; second, as desert roses.

An older man was staffing the counter, knowledgeable about the rocks in the store and around the area. I asked if he was Ken. He chuckled. “No,” he said. “Ken has been gone for a long time. His sons run the store now. I just work here.” And he told us the store’s origin story.

Back in 1926, Ken and his wife were in facing some tough times financially, so the wife set up a little stand at their house to sell vegetables. With all the natural attractions in the area, a number of tourists stopped by. But instead of buying vegetables, the tourists wanted to buy the rocks that the couple had for lawn decor. So Ken and his wife followed the money: instead of selling vegetables, they sold rocks. And thus Ken’s Minerals & Trading Post was born.

We probably bought too many rocks. But, it’s a really nice rock shop.

Mount Rushmore, Keystone, South Dakota

Mount Rushmore is pretty straightforward: the faces of four major American presidents carved into the side of a mountain. Despite their grand 60-foot-tall visages, they kind of look bored instead of thoughtful.

The four presidents were chosen by the artist, Gutzon Borglum, to represent four stages of American history: George Washington for the birth of America; Thomas Jefferson for its growth; Theodore Roosevelt for its development; and Abraham Lincoln for the preservation of the country. Sculpting began in 1927 and was completed in 1941.

Allegedly, Mount Rushmore was named after a lawyer for a mining company, Charles Edward Rushmore, who spent time in the area with mining prospectors. He asked the prospectors the name of the mountain, and they said it had no name, so they named it after him. Here is how it looked in the late 1800s:

Photo from the National Park Service.

It’s an interesting memorial, but it’s hard to imagine going often.

Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota

This is one of those self-made landmarks: a huge, sprawling maze of rooms to buy all kinds of souvenirs and other stuff. It’s like a strangely-designed mall, except all the stores are owned by Wall Drug. You can also eat there. And you know this before arriving because Wall Drug has a zillion billboards along the highway for hundreds of miles in advance, advertising water and coffee and food and whatnots. They’ll probably be the first landmark to have billboards in space, if they don’t already.

Wall Drug started in 1931 by Ted Hustead, a Catholic pharmacist who wanted to work in a town where he could attend mass. As Hustead described it, business was terrible for the first few years, but then his wife Dorothy had the bright idea to offer free ice water to tourists driving past Wall on their way to other tourist sites. Immediately their business saw an upswing.

Today the ice water is still free and the coffee is still 5¢. Still, we didn’t buy anything, or eat anything, or drink anything — we were already well hydrated. But we did wander around boggling at all the trinkets until we found bathrooms. I doubt anyone sells a shirt that says, “I went to Wall Drug and all I did was pee.”

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Not far from Wall is the entrance to the Badlands National Park: nearly 250,000 acres of remarkably striking landscapes and natural beauty. We didn’t have much time, but we did drive the 30-mile Badlands Loop Road (Highway 240) to see the northern part of the park.

“I really wonder what the first humans thought when they saw this,” wondered Luke, age 14, in amazement.

“It’s almost like some kind of ancient war zone,” I said, “if the ancients had nuclear weapons.”

“If I didn’t know about modern science and religion,” agreed Luke, “I might wonder if the gods had a battle here.”

“Who won?” I asked. “Who lost?”

Prairie Homestead, Philip, South Dakota

You can’t exit northeast out of the Badlands without passing by the Prairie Homestead. It is a century-old relic of a pioneer family from 1909. Dug into the side of a hill and supported with a wood frame, the house’s walls are dirt bricks and its roof is covered in thick sod.

“Can you imagine trekking out here from the East Coast, digging a house out of the ground, and living in it all alone for a long time?” I asked as we stood inside the sod house, looking at the old walls papered with old newsprint.

Beth, age 11, shook her head. “It’s amazing the human race has survived.”

I thought the admission price was steep, but it is a unique artifact of history. Unusually, there are white prarie dogs everywhere.

Dignity Statue, Chamberlain, South Dakota

At 50 feet tall, this statue of a peaceful, thoughtful Native American woman is impressive, especially since you can walk right up to it and sit at its feet (or on its feet, if you choose; they're big enough).

The artist, Dale Lamphere, said,

“Dignity represents the courage, perseverance and wisdom of the Lakota and Dakota culture in South Dakota. My hope is that the sculpture might serve as a symbol of respect and promise for the future.”

Dignity can be found at the highway rest area in Chamberlain, South Dakota — a sentence that would not make sense in any other context. But she really is striking. The reflective blue tiles in her shawl turn and twinkle in the wind. I’ve read that there are lights on the tiles at night, but we were there during a sunny day.

World’s Only Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota

Before the trip, I was amazed at the number of people who insisted we had to visit the World’s Only Corn Palace.

Dating back to 1892, the Corn Palace features enormous, mostly monochromatic brownish murals made entirely of corn cobs, using a dozen different varieties of corn to achieve variation in tone and color. They slice the cobs in half lengthwise, then nail them to the wall, updating the murals annually based on designs by local artists. They claim that it “is known around the world as a folk-art wonder on the prairie of South Dakota.”

There are several murals on the exterior of the building. The building is also a civic center with a large auditorium and a basketball court, so there are plenty more murals around the perimeter of the staging area inside. Apparently, USA Today named the Corn Palace one of the top 10 places in America for high school basketball, a factoid which baller Luke, age 14, has trouble believing. "This is just weird," he remarked, but he still tried on a corn cob hat for sale.

On the day we arrived, it appeared the front murals were in the process of being taken down. And with no impending events, the basketball court was turned into a souvenir shop.

Spirit Lake, Iowa

We drove out of the east side of South Dakota and briefly into Minnesota, then dipped south across the state line to Iowa for the night.

I’ll be honest: this stop was primarily a convenient way to check another state off the list. We did not see any actual sights there. Sorry, Iowa.

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Unless noted otherwise, all photos are taken by the kids and I, and are shared under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

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