Mount Rushmore

Saturday, August 30, 2008
Mt. Rushmore, SD
Patriotism, Americana, and a sense of history slapped us in the face at the sight of the granite busts of George, Abe, TR, and Tommy J. TR is fast becoming our favorite dead President with his badass frontier sensibilities and creation of the NPS (our home for the month). This was luckily my second visit to the national monument. Do you ever get the feeling that you member some things as a kid as much bigger than they actually were? I kept telling Rach and Zaks how amazing Lincoln’s eyes are. “The pupils are 16 feet long!” I told them. The pupils are actually 20 inches, but still impressive. We thought Mt. Rushmore would be cheesier than it was, although at first sight it seemed we wouldn’t mesh well with the “Proud to be an American” and “Harley Davidson” tees. Our visit reminded us how amazing those four presidents truly were, how strong their convictions, how numerous their accomplishments and left satisfied…and feeling a little sheepish for not wearing our American Flag tees.
Back on the road, this upwelling of historical persons lead to another would-you-rather-type question that provided hours of entertainment. If you could take as many as 6 people from history on this road trip, who would you take? Genghis Khan was immediately shot down (the threat of mass murders and highway conquering would be too great during traffic jams) and the implications of having MLK and Thomas Jefferson in the same car seemed tenuous.
On the way out of town, we enjoyed a Bronto Burger at the Flinstone’s Theme Park but declined to pay the $9 admission to really enter Bedrock City. However, we would like to know (and took a bit too much time to answer ourselves) would you rather be the Flinstones or the Jetsons?