Over the river and Around the woods, this time.

Despite the logistical challenges of finding both the campground and Rudi, we managed to make it to Mt. Rushmore for the lighting ceremony. In the summer, the lighting ceremony begins at 9:00, which consists of four short movies documenting each of the presidents in the monument, singing the national anthem, the lighting of the monument, and culminating by acknowledging all military personnel present at the amphitheater. We arrived in the RV first and made our way to the amphitheater. We got our first up-close views of the monument in the waning daylight hours. The sky was clear, and we had a wonderful view of this impressive statue at dusk. Rudi showed up within 5 minutes and found us without any problems, and I gave him a low-down of the agenda. We found our place at the back of the amphitheater for the ceremony. Kristin and Bella sat on the stairs leading from the observation platform down to the amphitheater while Kellen, Rudi, and I stood behind the last row of benches.

Kellen was mildly interested, at best, with the movies and was fixated on the empty wheel chair in front of him. The owner, sitting on the bench in front of the chair, appeared apprehensive about Kellen's proximity to her chair.  If she had a rope she would have chained it to her leg.  Then Kellen tried for 10 minutes to “share the bench” in front of us, which was full with people watching the show. Try as he might to find a corner of the bench to sit down on, he couldn't squeeze out enough real estate even for his little body.  So, he retreated to the stairs from the to sit with Kristin and Bella.

After the monument was lit up, I started taking pictures. Naturally, my tripod was sitting safely in the belly of the RV, so I decided to use the garbage cans by the side of the amphitheater as an impromptu tripod. As I took pictures of the statue all military personnel made their way down to the stage, and were introducing themselves one at at time. I was satisfied that I had enough pictures and was standing around looking for the rest of the family, when over the loudspeaker I heard “Rudi Urban – Army and New York National Guard”. I jumped on the bench to get a picture of him on the stage with the rest of the military personnel. Pretty cool.

We rendezvoused back with the family and drove the much shorter 20 minute route back to Wolf Camp, where we set up Rudi's tent, had a snack, and turned in for the night.   

I'll have to come back and post better pictures when we get good Internet service.