Vacation Day 4

We did not have internet access at our last hotel so I did not get to post anything! I am catching up now.....

Saturday, July 3, 2010: Today we got up and once again had breakfast at the hotel, which was serving a little different food than yesterday. We checked out of the hotel and left Deadwood, heading to Keystone. We took a 2-lane highway to get there, which had pretty scenery along the way. We drove into Keystone through the commercial, touristy district and quickly found out hotel, the Roosevelt Inn. We did not check in yet though, as we went straight to Mt. Rushmore, getting there around 12:00. We took lots of pictures and walked the path that takes you as close to the monument as possible. We looked in the museum, watched the film, and talked to the park rangers a little. The monument is very impressive. We ate lunch around 2:00 at the restaurant there, went into the gift shop and bought several souvenirs and then finally left around 4:00. We checked into the hotel and then looked around in all of the little shops in downtown Keystone. We also went to the alpine slide, which is literally right next door to our hotel (good planning on my part, huh?). We all rode up and slid down once and decided to keep our extra tickets for tomorrow. We then went back to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, which is a pizza place and it was really good. We went to our hotel room for a little while after dinner and rested before heading back to Mt. Rushmore for the evening lighting. We arrived there at about 8:45 and found a seat in the amphitheater. It was raining just a little bit so we all took our umbrellas along. It was also chilly outside so we wore our jackets and hoodies. The orchestra in the amphitheater played patriotic music while the lighting took place. We kind of thought there might be a laser light show or colored lights but there was not. It was just white/yellow lighting on the monument at night but it was nice and again, impressive. I learned today that during the carving of Mt. Rushmore, there were NO casualties! I think that is amazing, considering they used a lot of explosives, people were hanging by harnesses every day, and the whole carving took 14 years to complete. We then came back to the hotel and went to bed. B2 is sleeping in the king size bed with me and Bruce while B1 is sleeping on a single-sized pull out couch bed. This was the only option that I could find available to us when I made this reservation. But with it being 4th of July weekend, we thought we better take it!