A day in the life

What's an average day on an American road trip like? As the last couple of weeks have been spent almost entirely in National Parks it's hard to say 'average'. But as this run of visits is almost over I thought I'd write an account of an almost typical day before heading into the middle of the country that everyone tells us is not worth stopping the car for.
We start the day like every other, at a motel that isn't at all bad. In comparison to England it's incredibly cheap too, at just over £20 for the room for the night and a sort of continental breakfast.
After a bit of cereal and toast for breakfast, whilst trying to ignore the 4 month saga of presidential election news on tv, we go through the daily process of shifting our bags and other such items into the car.
Once the car starts, it's been having a bit of trouble of late, it's off into town.
Rapid City springs another surprise on us as it is home to a part of the Berlin wall on display in a park Downtown. It's an interesting exhibit and on the face of it an odd choice to be one of only a handful of places in the world to have a section of the wall on display.
It transpires that the wall is here due to the various secret missile defence locations in the South Dakota plains that apparently symbolise peace and the protection thereof. We knew one of these missile control centres was near to Badlands National Park but we couldn't find it. It's certainly a good place to hide a missile compound in amongst the endless plains and farmlands.
Like every other day we fill up with petrol. It's true that in America petrol is a lot cheaper than good ole Blighty, about two thirds cheaper, but there is usually a much larger distance to drive here. Everything in the west is spread out so each day a few hundred miles on the clock is no surprise. Even so petrol here is rising daily and is becoming a constant bug for the American motorist. Unfortunately for all their complaining and thinking that they're the most influential country in the world they are helpless when it comes to petrol prices. They've tried to lower petrol prices for the last 7 years by appealing to petrol companies but these pleas are happily ignored year in year out.
So on the road we go and towards one of the nations most famous monuments, Mount Rushmore. Unlike other national parks or national monuments Mount Rushmore is free to get in. But like most things here all is not quite what it seems. We have a national parks pass so an entrance fee wouldn't bother us anyway but it turns out that this pass doesn't cover us for the parking charge implemented at the site. Now this is the ridiculous bit. To see one of the iconic examples of Americana and images of the men who made this country free you have to pay $10 to pay to park in a car park that was subcontracted by the parks service to be built and run. You could say fair enough and pay the $10 to park in the awful looking multi-storey car park or you could consider why you're paying at all. At least 3 million people visit this park every year. The parking fee is said to cover the maintenance and construction of the car park. So that means it costs $30 million a year to do this. Somehow I don't believe it. As we've discovered on this road trip America is the land of the free, but you have to pay for it.
So, we park down the road for nothing and take a 15 minute walk in the sunshine to enter the monument.
There's no denying it, Mount Rushmore is impressive in many ways. To even conceive the idea of blasting a mountain and sculpting faces of famous presidents into it is one of immense audacity and vision. The execution of the project is equally stunning. 14 years of explosions and meticulous carving created these likenesses of four US presidents. The original idea was to bring in tourism to the Black Hills of South Dakota and you have to say that it fulfilled this goal spectacularly. It probably wouldn't have worked as well if the first idea to create typically South Dakota based characters faces in the rock, such as Wild Bill.
I normally don't like too much interference between mankind and nature when it comes to beautifying an area but it certainly works here.
The heads of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln all look great and are huge in scale. You can take a short walk to the foot of the monument for a different perspective and read a bit about the process aswell as a bit of American history in the visitors centre. Sculpting this thing in a mountain of this size looked incredibly tricky from the pictures on display and needed a few helpers who all fell under the controlling eye of master sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
From here we continue south, we're nearly in the middle of the country now and a plan to where we go now is becoming more and more vague. There's so much to see in the west and we've seen soo much of it that it's almost left us thinking what do we see from now until New York on the other side of the country?
We briefly stop off at another National Park, Wind Cave National Park, but can only go into the caves with a ranger and it's too late in the day for that.
So we pull up into a small town, Hot Springs, and settle in for the night in a standard chain motel. A walk around the main street and along the river is a nice relief to being stuck in a desperately barren town for the evening. It still ain't great but ain't bad either. We end the day with a sandwich from Subway, living the high life I tell thee. Not bad for a day's work but a long driving day is ahead before we enter our last national park and major city in a while. After that, who knows!?