Day 2: Nebraska and South Dakota | Chimney Rock, Scott's Bluff and Mt. Rushmore

We left our cool little hotel in Sidney, NE to see a little snow dusting on the ground. Now we finally get to start hitting the monuments and parks. First stop, Chimney Rock National Historic Site in Nebraska. Famous Scott Clinton over the shoulder pic to the right. Chimney Rock was a guiding point for the Oregon Trail heading west. After spending a few minutes at the Visitor Center, it looks like we will be following the Oregon Trail for a while during our trip west.

Chimney Rock


We stopped outside of Scottsbluff in Gering, NE to have lunch at the local counter. We both ordered breakfast so the food was pretty good. It is hard to mess up eggs. I also had to grab one of their "big as your head" cinnamon roles before we left. (This decision would serve me well later in the car when I needed a quick fix to get me through my daily afternoon lack-of-food coma.)



Scott's Bluff National Monument (lay, lie, laid, lain, ?) just up the road. You can see it from the highway so we pulled up and parked our car next to the sign. We hiked a small and vanishing path that lead toward one of the bluffs. After reaching the bluff we noticed a visitor center a bit further up the road with a nice trail that would have been a little easier hike than the "unmarked" one we had taken.


Eventually we made it to the Visitor Center where we discovered a few things that would shape our trip for the next 3 weeks.

First up, the National Park Pass. Jerry Lucas, one of the Rangers at the Scott's Bluff Visitor Center did a great salesman job in convincing me to purchase the pass that would allow us entry into over 300 National Parks and Monuments (and probably other things I can't remember right now.) His pitch was unsuspected and almost unnoticed, but effective none the less. $50 for entry to every park we were going to see was a money saver right off the bat. We would have spent that at Yellowstone and Grand Teton within the week! I was already sold, but there was more. He must have seen me coming from a mile away. He introduced me to the "collectible" aspect of owning the pass. Oh no! I was in over my head. I was swimming in the same feeling I used to have while walking into baseball card shops as a kid. I couldn't reach for my credit card fast enough as he explained how we could collect stamps from every park and monument in the US and put them in a scrapbook. They even sold a special passport book that was especially designed to collect the stamps as well as stickers that you could buy at each park visitor center. The pass was the best 50 bucks we spent on the trip.

Second, our friendly Ranger Jerry became the first official portrait for "The Project", representing Nebraska. Jerry agreed to have his picture taken outside of the visitor center with Scott's Bluff Monument in the background. It was Scott's and my first attempt at getting all of the photo equipment out of the back of the Bravada and set up for a shoot. There were plenty of onlookers as Jerry put on his hat and jacket and struck a few distinguished poses for the camera.

With new park pass and our first portrait for "The Project" in hand, we headed north toward Alliance, NE and our next stop - Carhenge.

Hwy 385


We left just enough time to make it to the... um... unusual... and...... interesting rural western Nebraska monument before sunset. We drove by the endless corn fields looking for the turn off taking us to the monument. I had to stop at Taco John's for a burrito to go when we got to downtown Alliance, NE since we hadn't had time to stop for lunch. We ended up asking a girl at a gas station for directions to Carhenge and arrived at the site with plenty of daylight left to take it all in. It was fantastic! If you find yourself in the general area... (that area being rather large if you go by population density) you should definitely plan to take some time at this future "National Monument". There you go. You heard it here first. NATIONAL MONUMENT! Of course, I have no idea of the criteria for such a status to be granted to anything at all, but, a bunch of cars buried to their windshields to make a model of Stonehenge in the middle of rural America should certainly garner some votes.

What a long day. You might think we would be done after taking in sooooo much. Not even close. This seems to be a pattern of our days - looooooong.


We left Carhenge and took some pretty pictures of a Western Nebraska sunset before driving north toward the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore. The drive was dark. The Black Hills at night are pretty much that, "Black". We arrived in Keystone, SD, and checked into a room before heading out to look for food. Scott had been here once before and remembered a bar that had good food. We found the place just in time to watch the Cardinals finish off the Mets in the NLCS and just miss their kitchen being open to serve us dinner. We ended up at the only place in town still serving food, the local gas station/pizza parlor/submarine sandwich shop.



With a little energy from eating our first sort-of-meal of the day we decided to head over to Mount Rushmore to take a look at the four boys at night. We drove up and weren't exactly sure if it would be open or if we would be escorted off the premises. The outside gates were open and there was a lane to get past the parking toll gates. We drove all the way up to the front step of the visitor center and parked the Bravada. It was strange to see the place with NOBODY around. We could have parked on the front sidewalk if we had wanted. We walked up the dark walkway to the observation deck and viewed the former presidents in their dramatic night lighting. Not a bad way to finish off a long day.