Our next adventure in the Black Hills - what a Rush!

The tilt from the little shed at the top

is called a "tipple."  This is the Aladdin

Tipple Mine (coal).

As it turned out, the internet at our next campground was not working until today, so this post will cover our last couple of days.  After leaving Devil's Tower area, we took a very scenic drive through Belle Fourche (a town which claims the title of being the geographic "center of the nation" status), Spearfish, Deadwood (which we'll come back to later) and Hill City (where we are spending the next 6 nights). The road took us through the Black Hills National Forest and past the beautiful high plains (Leslie, our friend the South Dakota native, said this was a great time to see them and she was right).  We stopped at an interpretive center/geocache that turned out to be an old coal mine called the "Aladdin Tipple Mine."

Entering the Avenue of the Flags

Today was our best day to travel to Mt. Rushmore since the weatherman calls for thunderstorms tomorrow and Friday.  It's good to be here when the summer crowds are gone, but we've heard the evening program at Mt. Rushmore is not to be missed and will still be crowded.  So that's what we'll do in a few hours, but we wanted to share some of our pictures from the monument.  It is a place where you find yourself looking up constantly; the presidents' faces change with the changes in the daylight.  It's a spectacular sight and we spent several hours walking through the exhibits and along the Presidential Trail across the front of the monument.

Washington and Jefferson

Roosevelt and Lincoln

We're looking forward to this evening's performance.  And keep those comments coming!  We love knowing others might be watching over our shoulders.

Gnorman takes in the monument.