After watching a nice sunrise over the Tower, I headed towards Mount Rushmore. I made a mistake as to the how I
arrived. I went through Keystone, wow… what a tourist trap. I thought I would get there earlier in the
day so it would not be as hot, and ,
incorrectly, thought it would not be as crowded. I found out later there were almost 30,000
people there that day. Next time, I need to make sure to come in from the east
and enjoy the Black Hills.
I took a few pics, as I
dogged people with Ipads, and decided that coming back for sunrise would be a
more peaceful way to enjoy the mountain.
One saving grace is that they had
some Thomas Jefferson recipe ice cream. This was probably the best ice cream
that I have ever had; it only had 3 ingredients; Cream, sugar and eggs. Delicious!
So next I decided to head towards Crazy Horse Memorial. It was worse,
9 busloads of people with Ipads were everywhere. I could hardly take a picture without someone
walking in front of me. 
It was time to get back to the solitude of a park. I headed to Jewel Cave National Monument
for a cave tour. I got there a few minutes before the
tour, and imagine, only 15 people on the tour. What a relief! Jewel cave has a number of different cave
formations. It has some Boxwork
formations (more on them it the upcoming Wind Cave blog). The name comes from the Calcite Crystal
formations. There was also an
interesting Fried Egg formation (see pic).
There was also a four foot long soda straw formation (this is the longest
I had seen). Definitely worth the trip.
From there, I headed to find a campsite near Mt Rushmore, so I could get there for sunrise in the
morning. On the way I stumbled across
the Naked Winery Tasting room. Worth
stopping for the name alone, and as a
nice surprise, the wine was really good too,
and the whole presentation, and label reading was very
entertaining. After a few tastes, it was off to the campsite.
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