希區考克電影《北西北》經典場景的背景地
There aren't that many good online travelogues about South Dakota so I am going to try and write the definitive one here. With that humble agenda, here goes...
South Dakota is not the very first place that would come to mind if you were planning to go for a trip. Our primary reason for visiting South Dakota was to see Mt Rushmore. Now, imagine SD without Mt Rushmore... In the early part of the century, wise South Dakotans invited Gutzon Borglum to drop his parochial idea of a confederate memorial in Georgia and come and build a National Memorial in South Dakota which was to be the Gateway to the West. To obtain funding, the locals invited President Calvin Coolidge to spend a little time and fish a little bit in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Great care was taken to ensure that he caught tons of fish with the result that the happy president committed federal funds to this effort. The monument took a paltry $1 million to build but this was through the depression years where the money was very difficult to come by. In 1999, almost 2 million people visited Mt Rushmore.
First Impressions
The majority of the touristy spots in SD are tucked away in a small area towards the South Western part of the state called the Black Hills Area. The largest city in that region is Rapid City. South Dakota is one of the most sparsely populated states in the US. Mt Rushmore itself is in the city of Keystone which is about a half-hour's drive from Rapid City. Keystone is one of the smallest towns in the US that we have seen. It has a population of 200-odd people. By merely turning up, we had increased the population by 1%! The day we landed in Rapid City, the temparature was 0 degrees F. They had even had a snow storm that day. We asked the good lady at the Super 8 Motel (highly recommended, by the way) what the prognosis was for the next two days :
"Oh! Tomorrow is going to be so much nicer. The temperature is going to be 36 degrees"
"And what about Sunday?"
"Sunday will be even better. They are predicting high 40s and even 50. We are going to have ourselves a heat wave"
Winter is serious out here. Back home, I've read boards on stores that say 'Open from 10am to 6pm daily'. Some say daily except Sunday. But in Keystone, most of the stores were closed and some had boards that said 'Closed. See you in May!'.
Mt Rushmore
The best time to see the monument is early in the morning when the rising sun casts a reddish glow on the faces of the mountains. The monument itself is open everyday. At night, the faces are lit up for about an hour or two. It has the usual accoutrements like a cafeteria (if you remember Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest where Eva Marie Saint 'shoots' Cary Grant) and a gift shop. Post Sept 11, there were many patriotic t-shirts and the like. The ironic part of all this was almost all the merchandise was 'Made in China'. 'Proud to be an American' magnets and miniature Mt Rushmore carvings and t-shirts with the Bald Eagle - all made in China. We truly live in a global economy, it seems.
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