Day 10 (August 28, 2015)

After enjoyable days in Yellowstone we arrived late yesterday evening (Aug. 27) to old style country & western village ”Keystone”. It’s located 2 miles from Mt. Rushmore only. We’re very tired after several hours on the road but not too much to visit in local Saloon. We had a great dinner there but also a live country music was available.

Our target was Mt. Rushmore but we arrived too late to see evening show and decided to go there early in the morning.

I read, there hasn’t been any other real reasons to build those presidential faces than improve travel business in Black Hills area. Construction phase took 12 years (1927 – 1939) with over 400 workers. The Sculptor (don’t remember his name, sorry) died 2 years after construction was finished.

Anyway, we liked a lot – Those 4 stone faces are so awesome and still in very good condition. Also environment of Mt. Rushmore is very peaceful. Same cannot be said for villages around. There are all conceivable ”Circus” activities, like Christmas village, for example. Dolphinarium we didn’t see but the most probably they have it too somewhere near the Mt. Rushmore.

Before noon we’re already back on the road to have real Marathon drive to as close St. Louis as possible. Pedal in Chevy Camaro SS was  released in Kansas City, about 3 hours before planned St. Louis. Drive was longest so far (700 miles) but not so bad experience. The most time speed limit was 80 mi/h and 400 horses above front tyres to guarantee that we weren’t bottlenecks.