Mt. Rushmore trip report: The best fireworks ever...

...that we never actually got to see.

Yeah.

I'll warn you up front that this trip report may be a little more detailed (read: boring) than I would normally post, but only because I have some local friends who read this who may want to go on a similar trip someday and I'd love to share our experiences with them. So if you're bored, look at the photos and then come back on Thursday! :)

The drive on Thursday was mostly uneventful. I say mostly, because somewhere north of the sprawling metropolis of Lusk, WY, we were caught in the most gnarly rainstorm I've ever seen in my entire life! We (and everyone else on the road) actually had to pull over for a while to let it pass because visibility was down to nearly zero. No kidding, I would not have been one tiny bit surprised to look out the window and see a funnel cloud snaking toward the ground--it was that kind of storm. In fact, The Mister saw a storm chaser van pass us going the other way when traffic started moving again!Because of a later-than-planned start, stopping for a long lunch in Cheyenne and our rainstorm delay we didn't get into Custer, SD until 8:00 pm. I had hoped that we'd be there earlier in the afternoon so that we could have visited Crazy Horse Memorial and seen the laser light show that they put on each evening. Instead, we had a late pizza dinner and then headed to bed. (For my local friends, we stayed at the Comfort Inn & Suites and I can definitely recommend it. Clean, nice rooms, good free breakfast, decent rate, good location.)

Friday morning we got up and breakfasted and noted with dismay that it was raining. Not hard, but the clouds looked heavy and low and the sprinkle turned to a drizzle pretty quickly. The Mt. Rushmore website said that the parking garage at the monument opened at 7:00 am and was often full by 10:00 am, but we heard other sources say that the parking garage didn't fill up until later. We hedged our bets and so we didn't work too hard at being out the door at the crack of dawn and hoped that the yucky weather would delay some people. We reached the parking garage at about 10:05 am and guess what? It was full. In fact, it had been full for quite a while.
Mt. Rushmore is at the peak of a mountain so the road slopes down on either side. Once the parking garage is full, they have people park on the shoulder of the road going down each side of the mountain. We drove until the line of cars on the shoulder stopped and ended up parking TWO MILES down the hill from Mt. Rushmore, almost to the town of Keystone. So that means 10.5 hours before fireworks were even scheduled to begin, the closest we could get was two miles away. Oy. We had plenty of time to kill, so we put on our jackets and grabbed the umbrella (which I'm thankful that The Mister insisted upon bringing--I may have left it home, as the weather report only forecast a 40% chance of rain) and headed the quarter mile or so down into Keystone to explore in the rain.

Keystone is the closest town to Mt. Rushmore and it is super-touristy. And not cool kitschy-touristy, more cheesy-touristy. Many of the attractions were not even open due to the rain--the putt-putt course, the 1880 train, the chairlift, the helicopter rides. We ended up at the Gutzon Borglum museum, mostly because it was indoors. We took a very informative self-guided audio tour and ended up learning quite a lot about Borglum, the sculptor for Mt. Rushmore. (Plus I just like saying Gutzon Borglum...doesn't it sound like something the Swedish Chef might be cooking on The Muppet Show?) The museum bills itself as "an exciting tour for the whole family!" but unless your four-year-old is heavy into Art History, she'll probably be as bored as mine was.
When we finished the museum tour the rain had gotten worse, but after spending a few minutes in the gift shop there was nothing else to do but go back out into the rain. We walked further into the downtown area, which consisted mostly of tacky T-shirt shops and ice cream parlors. We stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants (which was so mediocre I don't even remember the name). Lunch was leisurely, as we were in no hurry to get back out into the rain. Finally it was time to leave, so we walked back up to the car (a good half mile or more) to wait and see if the rain let up before we headed up the hill to Mt. Rushmore. Fortunately we'd brought along our portable DVD player and a copy of National Treasure 2 (chosen because it ends up at Mt. Rushmore; this would have also been a fun choice) so we put the down the seats in the back of the car and made ourselves a nest with our fireworks-watching blankets and settled in to wait for a while.

Finally at about 4:00 pm the rain had stopped, so we gathered up our backpacks and blankets and set out for the two mile climb up the hill--a hill so steep that it is a 10% grade at some points. The rain had stopped and although the air was on the cool side the humidity was still somewhere north of 80%, making for a very sticky hike, and let's not forget that I am 6.5 months pregnant which means that naturally, I had to go potty. I have to give huge praise to Maren, who soldiered all the way up that hill on her little four-year-old legs and never complained at all! She was AWESOME! At first I was kicking myself for not bringing the stroller for her to ride in but it would have actually been very difficult to push up such a steep hill.The sun had come out by the time we finally reached Mt. Rushmore, at about 5:30 pm, where we joined the other 10,000 people who had come to watch the festivities. Because it was quite literally wall-to-wall people (some of whom had been there since the early morning to claim spots for their chairs) we weren't able to see many of the exhibits. We eventually found ourselves a spot on a concrete walkway where we could see the entertainment going on down in the amphitheater and where we'd be able to see the fireworks as well and settled in. Sometime around 8:00 pm, the clouds started to look menacing and headed our way again. It got colder and everyone got their rain gear out to get ready for the rain that threatened. It didn't ever rain, but what did happen was that a fog bank rolled in so heavy and low that it was difficult to see the amphitheater stage anymore, and seeing the faces on the mountain was completely out of the question.
The fog was so thick and heavy that it would have taken a big storm or wind to get it to budge. Obviously, this meant that fireworks would be impossible to see. The announcer tried to keep the crowd positive, but of course it didn't look good. We broke the news to Maren, and bless her heart, she cried and cried, "No fireworks!" Honestly, I can't say that I blamed the poor child--I felt like crying too! After all we'd endured--driving 7 hours to get there, spending so much on a hotel room and food, not to mention spending all morning in the rain and then the grueling two-hour road march up the mountain, all for nothing. And to top it all off, I'd 'wasted' Maren's cute 4th of July outfit on a day where I couldn't even take any photos because of the rain and crowds. To say that it was incredibly disappointing is an understatement indeed.

At 9:30 pm when the fireworks were scheduled to start, the announcer came back and said they had decided to go ahead with the show despite the weather. We waited a few more minutes while they got things ready, and then they started shooting off the fireworks, although all that was visible through the fog were glows of different colors and very occasionally we could see a sparkle or two. Judging from the sounds of how many shells were launched, it would indeed have been the best fireworks ever...had we been able to see it! I still can't believe they didn't just cancel the whole thing, rather than waste tens of thousands of dollars blowing off fireworks that no one could see.When it was all over, we packed up our stuff and headed out for the two mile walk back down the mountain to the car. Poor Maren was completely exhausted by that point, and rode on Daddy's shoulders the whole way down. Actually, she slept on Daddy's shoulders the whole way down, making for a precarious trip for both her and The Mister, because she kept falling this way and that and I was afraid she'd fall backwards and they'd both be injured. Oh, and as we were walking, the skies finally started to clear and we could see the stars for the first time that night. Nice irony.

By the time we walked to the car and then drove back to Custer the long way around (they close the road over the mountain so you can only go the direction you were parked) we didn't get back to the hotel until nearly midnight, at which point we were all so exhausted that we literally fell into bed and were snoring within minutes.

Whew...I warned you that would be long & detailed! Tomorrow I'll be back with days 2 & 3 of our trip.