There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon"
Lennon/McCartney. Beatles White Album
This is my third trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota. I've been looking for Rocky Raccoon, but so far I haven't found him. They say he went to Hollywood ....
We left the Badlands in the late morning for the relatively short drive to Mt. Rushmore National Memorial. Rather than double back to the interstate, we took scenic SR 44, which took us through, of all places, Scenic SD. We would spend the whole afternoon there and stay for the evening lighting ceremony. Mt. Rushmore stirs something inside me that I can't explain. It is a grand monument created
by a man, but that will probably survive all of mankind. We arrived at the monument and parked the coach in the RV parking area where there were two mountain goats grazing about 50 feet away. They never left the whole time we were there. We began exploring the monument and attended a ranger-led walk to the base of the mountain. We returned to the coach for lunch, and then hiked around the monument some more. Finally we ate dinner in the cafe before the scheduled 9:00 lighting ceremony. Old movie buffs will remember that the cafe and other sites at 
Mt. Rushmore were the setting for several scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's thriller North By Northwest, starring Cary Grant. Unfortunately, that cafe was torn down several years ago and replaced when the NPS performed major renovations at the park. Damn shame. I thought the NPS was charged to preserve and protect our national treasures!It was cold and windy (41 degrees and 20+ mph) during the lighting ceremony, but we stuck it out. There is no campground on Mt. Rushmore, so after the ceremony we drove about 25 miles down the hill to Rapid City where we parked at the Wal-Mart Supercenter one block south of I-90.
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