Day 12, Rapid City, S.D.

RAPID CITY, S.D. -- "There are four faces on Mt. Rushmore, carved in a mountain of stone/Men who lived and died for a nation, giants in a land all their own" (New Christy Minstrels).

It's true, there ARE four faces on Mt. Rushmore, and they are larger than life, just like the four presidents they were carved to memorialize. But after you've seen those four faces from five or six different vantage points, it all seems kind of the same. Certainly a cool venue, a great cafetiera and the best souvenirs we've encountered.

So we viewed the four faces from the President's Walkway, and from the Sculptor's Studio, and several points in between an beyond -- including the side of a distant mountain we reached by chairlift. We also viewed the incomplete visage of an important Native American leader, Crazy Horse, at the native's version of Mt. Rushmore. I must confess I didn't get it at first. The sculpture is far from complete -- basically just a face. A face that I completely missed for about the first 30 minutes of our visit. The sculpture is a work in progress, and up until 1987 sculptors focused on finishing the horse Crazy Horse is depicted on. Then in 1987, the sculptor's widow directed the team to focus on finishing the face. So there is a doorway-shaped hole in the mountain just beneath the face, which will become part of Crazy Horse's arm. The hole is all yours truly could see, until someone pointed out the sculpture's nose. So it took me a while to appreciate the $27 we spent to enter and view a hole in the mountain.

We then moved onto the venue Joe was really interested in -- the Presidential Slide in Keystone, S.D. We were summarily transported up the side of a mountain on a chairlift, with plastic sleds in tow -- for the return trip. Basically a plastic toboggan run back down the mountainside. Joe took the fast lane and loved the whole thing. We finished the day with another three hours in the waterpark, and I am convinced that when people ask the kids what they remember about the trip, it will be the six million times they went down the waterslides.