We took off yesterday morning for the Black Hills. We had a special project that we are working on for a client. We headed out to Wall first to check into our hotel room and then on to Mt. Rushmore.
You know it’s going to be bad when you can’t find any parking place in Keystone. We went up the hill very slowly in heavy traffic, past the Mt. Rushmore parking ramp and then down the road. We finally found a parking place along the side of the road about 4 miles out.
We grabbed our stuff and started walking.
We stopped to rest at this lookout where you can see George Wahington’s profile on the mountain. This area was full of firetrucks just in case the fireworks started something ablaze.
There had been brief showers all day in the Hills, but at this point everything looked great. That was to change.
About a mile out, we saw a huge manacing black cloud coming in from the west. We hurried under the parking ramp to avoid the certain rain that never arrived.
The park itself was full to capacity and the rangers were not letting any more people in so we patiently waited in the parking lot for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin.
The black cloud had turned out to be not much of anything except a little mist that now shrouded the top of the carvings on the mountain.
Ever sat in a parking lot for 2 or 3 hours with nothing to do with 2 kids?
We passed time by yelling at the kids as they picked on each other and visiting with people from across the country as we waited in long lines for the portapotties.
The mist turned into fog and we decided to head back to the car. You couldn’t see the highway from the parking ramp and we had not see the faces in several hours. We didn’t think that they would be shooting off anything.
We were wrong.
The SD Highway Patrol had shut down the road at 8 pm and they were not going to let anyone go back to their car until after the fireworks were over.
A ranger announced that they were going to set off a test shot at 9:20. We heard a boom and the sky glowed red. The crowd cheered wildly and the fireworks started.
No one could see any of the foreworks because of the fog. They did have the option of waiting an hour for the weather to clear, but they started the fireworks on time.
By 10:00 and the end of the show, we could see a few of the bursts through the mist, but most of the show consisted of only booms and colored clouds.
Leaving Mt. Rushmore wasn’t so easy. The highway was still blocked off while the authorities check for any potential fires caused by the sparks from the fireworks. A huge line formed as the crowd waited impatiently to get back to their cars. THe fog was gone and the stars were out. If they had only waited…
The 4 mile walk back to the van seems to take a lot longer than it did only a few hours before. Our feet were tired. It took forever.
Since we are staying in Wall for the weekend, we now had a two hour drive ahead of us. We found the motel room at 2 am.