So when we stopped for gas I picked up a free map that helped point me in the right direction (I hadn't even bothered to get directions before the trip), and we were on our way. I tried to get us there by 10:30 in case they had a kids program that started at the same time as the Badlands one (I sort of did, except we had to wait in line to pay to park, then put on sunscreen, so we would have missed it). Turns out the smaller parks and monuments usually don't have guided programs for kids, just the booklet to do to become a Junior Ranger.
Before I left for the trip, I purchased an annual pass for $80 that gets me into any National Park/Monument/etc for a year. However, that doesn't help you at Mount Rushmore. Entry is "free", but you pay $11 to park (so if you want to see it for free, you can either just drive by the entrance and settle for that quick view... or hike up the mountain (probably 5 miles, although I have no idea where you'd even park for that). Whatever. And hey, the parking pass is valid for the rest of the year... but they put your state and car make on it so that you can't transfer it. I'm so listing it on ebay to see if anyone from PA with a Hyundai wants to pay me $2 to circumvent the system, because the system pissed me off.
So Mount Rushmore is stupid. I already knew it would be, but I can confirm from personal experience now. Is the sculpting/engineering impressive? Yes. But they took a cool rock, made it into something manmade, and then used it as a monument to nationalism. No thanks.
The place was just crawling with people. I wonder if anyone else was using the occasion to undermine American 'values' with their kid. I didn't push it too strong, but I told her about Native Americans and how when white people first got here they were mean and took the land.
The Junior Ranger book was kinda hard. Most of the books have her doing activities for 5 to 8 year olds, so even though she can read she's still a little young for some of the activities. This one wanted her to be able to name the presidents on the monument... Kiddo didn't even know what a president is. Whatever, we got it done. Well not exactly. We skipped a few things here and there, like a part about soldiers protecting America and what it stands for. One of the things she was supposed to do was take a picture, so here's her picture:
The video they show is just awful (the opening sequence was honestly something to the point of "when plans for Mount Rushmore were announced, it was controversial, because people thought you shouldn't change nature to try to improve it, but we did it anyway, and because it's so awesome nobody disagrees anymore"). It went way over the top with the 'symbol of freedom' and all that. So after it was over we talked about how they should have just left the rock alone, it looked cooler beforehand.
Mostly for this trip I just gave Google the starting point and the destination, made sure the directions weren't really weird, and printed. I didn't have time to look at maps and tweak routes to my liking. But here I was at Rushmore, needing to link up with my existing directions, and I just had some touristy maps to work with. A ranger recommended a scenic route up a mountain - he said I would have to double back to avoid driving through a state park and paying an entrance fee, but I found a road on the map that looked it would skip that (and it wasn't even that remote, it was paved!).
So we ended up driving up Iron Mountain in the Black Hills National Forest. The drive was just gorgeous. I didn't want to slow us down by stopping at overlooks (this was not a particularly fast route to take, although I didn't regret the choice), so the only picture I have is of a tunnel. The road also went through three single lane tunnels (which helped sell me on taking it, Kiddo loves when we drive through tunnels). I never did find the road I had planned to turn on, but the ranger's declaration of when you have to pay the state park was wrong. So it worked out!
From there it was highways through southwestern South Dakota and into the corner of Nebraska. There wasn't much to look at, although at one point the road slowed a bit for the tiny town of Ardmore... and nearly everything was boarded up. A later wikipedia search does identify it as a modern ghost town.
Our destination was a house about 30 minutes west of Scottsbluff, but I decided to take the detour to the National Monument. Kiddo was really worn out and ready to just get to the house, so she didn't want to go, even though it meant another Junior Ranger badge. I told her that I really wanted to see the Bluff itself, and that I'd pick up a Junior Ranger book and she could decide if she wanted to do it then or do it later and mail it in. It was over 100 degrees in Nebraska, so we did not linger long outside. Sure enough. she wanted to do the book right away.
The park building and the booklet really focus on the Oregon Trail / western expansion aspect of the area. I've realized that, outside of how I enjoy the actual Oregon Trail game for nostalgia reasons, I don't care. It's just too hard to view it through the default American view right now... I just see colonialism and the removal of indigenous people. I've never been in the plains area of the country before, and I think seeing so much land that's beautiful and (relatively) empty of modern civilization is really making me think about American colonialism and how things should not have happened like they did (it's not that I didn't already know that, but it's more prominent in my consciousness than it's ever been before).
Her Junior Ranger book was aimed at 3 to 7 year olds, so I thought it would be easier than it was, but there were definitely some things in there that were way over a 5 year old's head. There were very few people there, so I knew the ranger would remember us from a few minutes before... so we just did the fun stuff and a few of the historical type questions, and I figured if he really needed us to do the harder stuff, we could. He saw how worn down the kid looked (although she was also covered in marker and looked a tiny bit zombie-ish), and he went ahead and swore her in. Two surprise Junior Ranger programs in one day!
We didn't drive up to the top of the Bluff. I'm sure the view is incredible, but I didn't want to keep slowing us down... and I didn't especially want to get out of the car again either. Did I mention yet how I'm so glad we were able to take the car with air conditioning in it?
Our host lived almost on the Nebraska / Wyoming border. I really liked her house. It really felt like an oasis in all that heat and sparseness of Nebraska. She told me she thinks she's the only liberal for miles (she has an Obama sticker on her ATV, which I found amusing), so I suppose it was an oasis of ideas as well. When we pulled up, she had run to the store but she left music playing outside, drinks on ice, and a note telling us to come in and wander around. It was pretty awesome. She was taking care of a few kittens for a neighbor (apparently rural Nebraska is lousy with sickly feral cats, by the way), so it was a lot of fun for us to have three adorable kittens walking around all weekend. Eventually I got the kid to bed and then caught up on internet things (hence the catching up on this blog). When we stay with people who are not night people, it's weird how I never really get to sit down and talk with them without the little one around.
The video they show is just awful (the opening sequence was honestly something to the point of "when plans for Mount Rushmore were announced, it was controversial, because people thought you shouldn't change nature to try to improve it, but we did it anyway, and because it's so awesome nobody disagrees anymore"). It went way over the top with the 'symbol of freedom' and all that. So after it was over we talked about how they should have just left the rock alone, it looked cooler beforehand.
Mostly for this trip I just gave Google the starting point and the destination, made sure the directions weren't really weird, and printed. I didn't have time to look at maps and tweak routes to my liking. But here I was at Rushmore, needing to link up with my existing directions, and I just had some touristy maps to work with. A ranger recommended a scenic route up a mountain - he said I would have to double back to avoid driving through a state park and paying an entrance fee, but I found a road on the map that looked it would skip that (and it wasn't even that remote, it was paved!).
So we ended up driving up Iron Mountain in the Black Hills National Forest. The drive was just gorgeous. I didn't want to slow us down by stopping at overlooks (this was not a particularly fast route to take, although I didn't regret the choice), so the only picture I have is of a tunnel. The road also went through three single lane tunnels (which helped sell me on taking it, Kiddo loves when we drive through tunnels). I never did find the road I had planned to turn on, but the ranger's declaration of when you have to pay the state park was wrong. So it worked out!
From there it was highways through southwestern South Dakota and into the corner of Nebraska. There wasn't much to look at, although at one point the road slowed a bit for the tiny town of Ardmore... and nearly everything was boarded up. A later wikipedia search does identify it as a modern ghost town.
Our destination was a house about 30 minutes west of Scottsbluff, but I decided to take the detour to the National Monument. Kiddo was really worn out and ready to just get to the house, so she didn't want to go, even though it meant another Junior Ranger badge. I told her that I really wanted to see the Bluff itself, and that I'd pick up a Junior Ranger book and she could decide if she wanted to do it then or do it later and mail it in. It was over 100 degrees in Nebraska, so we did not linger long outside. Sure enough. she wanted to do the book right away.
The park building and the booklet really focus on the Oregon Trail / western expansion aspect of the area. I've realized that, outside of how I enjoy the actual Oregon Trail game for nostalgia reasons, I don't care. It's just too hard to view it through the default American view right now... I just see colonialism and the removal of indigenous people. I've never been in the plains area of the country before, and I think seeing so much land that's beautiful and (relatively) empty of modern civilization is really making me think about American colonialism and how things should not have happened like they did (it's not that I didn't already know that, but it's more prominent in my consciousness than it's ever been before).
Her Junior Ranger book was aimed at 3 to 7 year olds, so I thought it would be easier than it was, but there were definitely some things in there that were way over a 5 year old's head. There were very few people there, so I knew the ranger would remember us from a few minutes before... so we just did the fun stuff and a few of the historical type questions, and I figured if he really needed us to do the harder stuff, we could. He saw how worn down the kid looked (although she was also covered in marker and looked a tiny bit zombie-ish), and he went ahead and swore her in. Two surprise Junior Ranger programs in one day!
We didn't drive up to the top of the Bluff. I'm sure the view is incredible, but I didn't want to keep slowing us down... and I didn't especially want to get out of the car again either. Did I mention yet how I'm so glad we were able to take the car with air conditioning in it?
Our host lived almost on the Nebraska / Wyoming border. I really liked her house. It really felt like an oasis in all that heat and sparseness of Nebraska. She told me she thinks she's the only liberal for miles (she has an Obama sticker on her ATV, which I found amusing), so I suppose it was an oasis of ideas as well. When we pulled up, she had run to the store but she left music playing outside, drinks on ice, and a note telling us to come in and wander around. It was pretty awesome. She was taking care of a few kittens for a neighbor (apparently rural Nebraska is lousy with sickly feral cats, by the way), so it was a lot of fun for us to have three adorable kittens walking around all weekend. Eventually I got the kid to bed and then caught up on internet things (hence the catching up on this blog). When we stay with people who are not night people, it's weird how I never really get to sit down and talk with them without the little one around.
My family and I took a trip through South Dakota sometime when I was in middle school, and I remember being really surprised by the huge pile of debris under Mount Rushmore, and how it's usually not something you see in pictures. In retrospect that's some pretty spot-on symbolism.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that last photo is so adorable.
I can't believe you did this trip without a smart phone. Whenever you talk about a map or printing directions I get anxiety.
ReplyDelete