Day 5: Still in Custer State Park, South Dakota

Today began with a long horseback ride on a fairly challenging course through Custer State Park -- up rocky inclines, crossing streams (sorry…. “cricks”), and following some narrow, rugged paths on hillsides as well. But it was breathtakingly beautiful… what a fantastic place! In order of largest to smallest (both as to horse and rider), our horses were named Chango, Prince, Tasheena, Hershey, Snazzy and Glory. Our guide was a very sweet Montana State student, with great stories of her seasonal job here at the park and a gorgeous regal-looking horse…. that also happened to be very gassy (the horse, that is, not our guide). Although she was a wealth of information on the park and horse-riding in general, even the most brilliant of statements tends to lose all effect when punctuated with a robust, tail-in-the-air horse fart. You’ll just have to trust me on that… Giggle. And this must have happened to her at least a dozen times!

After the ride, we walked back to our campsite and readied ourselves for a repeat visit to Mt. Rushmore, albeit by a less complex route. We had debated whether or not we should return, since we had seen it under lights the night before, but as it turns out we were all very glad that we did. We hiked the “Presidential Trail” and ended up joining an interesting ranger-led tour that had just began, and we made it to the Sculptor’s Gallery – among other things - where we learned two very interesting facts. First, the original plans for Mt. Rushmore were to have the torso of each of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln carved into the mountain as well, with Roosevelt looking on over the shoulders of Jefferson and Lincoln. And second, that there is a “secret” room that was built behind Lincoln’s head to store important national documents. You know, the ones that are probably all easily accessible on-line now? LOL. Nice try Mr-Cloak-and-Dagger-secret-room-builder-guy! Then we rounded out the rest of our hike around Mt. Rushmore, and took in one last view of the fab four while the kids huddled over their Jr. Ranger books to compare notes and make sure that they would all earn the certifying signature of the park ranger on the back page of that book… and thereby obtain the coveted gold-toned plastic Jr. Ranger badge and Mt. Rushmore patch!

We drove into the town of Custer for dinner, choosing the steak and ribs place on the corner of Mt. Rushmore Road and 6th Street. The building housing this restaurant, built in 1881, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was originally the First National Bank of the Dakota Territory (established 8 years before South Dakota was a state). It was just a few doors down from a Sheriff’s office that looked like it was plucked directly out of a Western movie, and right across the street from, quite simply, the “Saloon” – complete with it’s distressed-wood front porch, shoulder-to-knee free swinging double doors, and Pabst Blue Ribbon sign swinging with a mildly eerie cr-e-e-e-e-eek in the evening breeze. The restaurant also had a beautifully-carved wood counter nestled in one of the corners, which they had converted into a coffee bar licensed by Starbucks… what a shame1 So, in protest, we all ordered our after-dinner Venti Nonfat Lattes and got out of Dodge. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em….

The evening ended with a roaring campfire, the heavy consumption of S’mores, and a dramatic reading of several campfire stories which were heavy on one-eyed monster chases, talking snakes and spooky Native American legends (but which were all carefully selected pre-trip to end with a surprisingly humorous twist at the end, so as to avoid sharing our bed with 3 or 4 extras).

Tonight we all go to bed, happy with the fact that the weather has been so perfect throughout our entire stay so far that we’ve used neither the furnace nor the air conditioning the entire time… and tonight will be no different. Good night!