Since I had Sunday off I decided to head into Rapid City and up into the Black Hills to visit Mount Rushmore. After I watched the church services on YouTube, and the baptism, I got changed and headed out. The day was very nice and it is a relatively short drive from the dorm/trailer to Mount Rushmore. Probably around 1.25 hours. I decided today to park and go see the presidents up close instead of just from the highway. The way it is set up is that Mount Rushmore is free but they charge you 10 dollars per car to park. I was very disappointment that a major access to the presidents was under construction and this limited the viewing area to just a small area to the side. I was glad that the number of tourists were down and so I was able to get close to take some good pictures. After viewing the presidents I decided to go down the road about a 1/4 of a mile and stop at the turn out called "Profile". The second picture above is where that is taken. It was never planned to have Washington's profile available from this viewpoint, it just turned out that way when the road was constructed. Also as a side note, it was not even planned to be Washington. You see when Borglum did the project planning Jefferson was supposed to be on the outside left and not Washington. But the rock turned out to be not cooperating and Jefferson was moved to the right of Washington. A little trivia you can store in you memory in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy.
After traveling around a bit I decided to head to Wall-Mart for some supplies and then to Popeye's, the best chicken around, for lunch. But due to the virus Popeye's was closed. So I went to Culver's instead.
After lunch I headed back to the trailer and decided to work off the lunch with a hike around the town of Wall. When I say around the town, I mean around the town. I left the trailer at the edge of the Badlands and walked up to the interstate and then back around to the trailer. Over 3 miles in total. The sad thing I saw is the amount of places not open, closed down or pretty much empty. You see Wall's population is 818 but when tourist season comes the number of tourists that visit Wall Drug is thousands a day. The hotels and campgrounds are usually full and tour buses arrive all the time. This virus has really put a crimp on the economy here and congress' decision to pay people more in unemployment then they were making in their jobs is really causing places to stay closed as they can't get any workers. I hope that when Wall Drug opens tomorrow that things will start to pick up as many people are depending on tourist money to survive.
On a side note. I was happy to hear that I would not be getting a roommate while here and surprised that I would not be in a regular dorm, but a trailer in town. After staying here two nights now I have come to the conclusion that regular dorm life has its advantages. Sure I like having a room to myself but at Yellowstone when I had one to myself I knew I could leave my room and go to the TV lounge or into the store or to the front of the store and visit with people. Not having this ability here does create a loneliness feeling that I never had at Yellowstone. I am sure when I start working tomorrow and for 8 hours I am around hordes of tourists, that I will appreciate the quite time in the trailer. But I think I will miss hanging out with the other workers in the dorm and just shooting the bull. Being alone is nice sometimes but I think it will start to wear on me if I don't figure something out about getting around people during my off time.
Again thanks for reading and have a great day.
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