After hibernation, I woke up to the smell of croissants and banana which we had bought at Walmart yesterday. The best part? I didn’t even have to leave my room!
Then we went to Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park, but we made a stop at a Nobel Prize winning neutrino detector. The only reason I knew what it was because of an episode from Young Sheldon in which Sheldon tries to make a neutrino detector.
After we reached Sylvan Lake, we had a store-bought lunch overlooking Sylvan Lake. Nothing much to say about that, although the chicken was despicable.
Now the fun (read: suicide mission) begins! By which I obviously mean going on a trail and having a near-death experience every time I climb a rock. However, we did fly the drone over Sylvan Lake. My incredibly fun job was keeping the drone in my line of not so perfect vision. My mom turned out to be better at that than me. Why is that embarrassing? BECAUSE I HAVE GLASSES AND THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO HELP ME SEE BETTER!
*Ahem* Anyway, my dad showed me the visual of the GPS route which looked like modern art. Or in other words, it looked like a child urinated on a canvas. Beautiful.
We then made it to the bridge, which inspired me to make creepy horror movie sounds by repeatedly tapping the metal, I literally got chills. Which is very normal, by the way. Don’t judge me.
Next we were on the Needles Highway. Which in the name itself makes me wonder if anyone has ever gotten a flat tire on the Needles Highway. Actually, I don’t want to be paranoid, so I’m going to say no.
Now comes the extremely boring drive until something happens that’s actually worth pulling over for. Cue the waiting music. Oh wait, the needles are already here? That was just about the most glorious thing that happened this trip! Besides sleeping, of course.
The needles looked like somewhat like my sewing needles at home, making it the perfect place to go rock climbing. I managed to grab on a series of rocks and got a good view of all the car going in and out of the needle’s eye (AKA a minuscular space where you actually drive at the speed limit for once in your life). Such law-abiding citizens!
My dad decided this was the perfect time to pull all his draw. He did this one thing when he flew the drone in sports mode, which makes Olympic athletes look like middle school gym students. He literally flew the drone so fast he nearly destroyed it. Why it had to be sports mode? I don’t know! We drove by the Cathedral Spires, which was the original inspiration for Mount Rushmore. Let me explain.
It went a little like this, a guy named Doane Robinson was driving the Needles Highway when his motor overheated. While he was waiting for his son to bring water to cool down the engine, he looked up at the Cathedral Spires and had a thought, what if he carved the faces of Western legends into the rock?
So, he got the state Senate to approve the idea. He got Gutzon Borglum, an architect who was at the time working on a Confederate memorial, to sculpt it. But Borglum said the Cathedral Spires were unsuitable for carving the faces, they looked at different areas to sculpt the faces and eventually settled on Mt. Rushmore.
Then Borglum argued that the sculpture should have a national appeal. So, they settled on sculpting the faces of four presidents representing a different aspect of US history on Mount Rushmore. We’ll get to that tomorrow when we actually go to Mount Rushmore. We then went to our new hotel, which was the nicest by far. We got a few hours of relaxation time before we set out once again.
This time for the Iron Mountain Road. I was especially excited about this because I was going to get a first glimpse of Mount Rushmore here. We finally saw Mount Rushmore through the tunnel. It was no joke — looked straight out of a post card. However, it was too bright for us to properly see the scenic parts of the drive itself.
There were some unique features, such as the mind-bending and stomach-churning turns and splits. Although the VGPSBTG kept referring to them as the most scenic part of the drive, try the only scenic part of the drive.
After that, the day was over. I have to say this was probably the least strenuous day of the trip. But one little perk remained, RICE WITH FRENCH FRIES. It was even homemade in the hotel room! I guess we’re lucky the smoke detector hasn’t gone off yet. See you tomorrow!