Mount Rushmore and Devils Tower

We got to Mount Rushmore up in the black hills of south Dakota. The view was spectacular. The Crazy horse memorial looked like there had not been much progress on it since the last time I saw it. The evergreen forests of the black hills looked like they were bein cleaned up because there were hundreds of piles of forest debris stacked nicely throughout the forests. We speculated that this was because for the past hundred years or so americans would put out smaller natural fires which the environment was able to handle. However since we would always put out the fires, the forest debris would build up and eventually cause unnaturally large fires which would burn down the entire forest. So now they have to clean all the debris so that this doesn't happen.

After Rushmore we went to devils tower wyoming and spent the night at the KOA campground. Did some laundry, showered, and reorg'ed the van. The next day we went into the devils tower park and hiked the loop around the tower and did some bouldering around. There were climbers going to the top of the tower. It was free to climb, you only had to register at the ranger station. Plans to return once we have some practice trad climbing.

Now it's Friday afternoon and we are headed to yellow stone where it's supposed to be approx. 52 degrees high and a low tonight of 25 degrees with a chance of snow. Lol. We went from 95 degrees in the bad lands, SD, to 25 degrees... It's gonna be a cold night.

Vanderstinks out.