Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
went in another store a couple of doors away-The World Famous Prospectors Gift Shop-
and found exactly the same stuff at identical prices and again I was the only customer. At
neither place did the people running things say hello or ask me how I was doing. They
would have in the Midwest. I went back out into the miserable drizzle and walked around
thetownlookingforaplacetoeat,buttherewasnothing.SoIgotbackinthecaranddrove
on to Mount Rushmore, forty miles down the road.
Mount Rushmore is just outside the little town of Keystone, which is even more touristy
than Deadwood, but at least there were some restaurants open. I went into one and was
seated immediately, which rather threw me. The waitress gave me a menu and went off.
The menu had about forty breakfasts on it. I had only read to number seventeen (“Pigs in
a Blanket”) when the waitress returned with a pencil ready, but I was so hungry that I just
decided, more or less arbitrarily, that I would have breakfast number three. “But can I have
link sausages instead of hashed browns?” I added. She tapped her pencil against a notice
on the menu. It said NO SUBSTITUTIONS. What a drag. That was the most fun part. No
wonder the place was half empty. I started to make a protest, but I fancied I could see her
forming a bolus of saliva at the back of her mouth and I broke off. I just smiled and said
“Okay, never mind, thank you!” in a bright tone. “And please don't spit in my food!” I
wanted to add as she went off, but somehow I felt this would only encourage her.
Afterwards I drove to Mount Rushmore, a couple of miles outside town up a steep road.
I had always wanted to see Mount Rushmore, especially after watching Cary Grant clam-
ber over Thomas Jefferson's nose in North by Northwest (a film that also left me with a
strange urge to strafe someone in a cornfield from a low-flying airplane). I was delighted
to discover that Mount Rushmore was free. There was a huge terraced parking lot, though
hardly any cars were in it. I parked and walked up to the visitors' center. One whole wall
was glass, so that you could gaze out at the monument, high up on the neighboring moun-
tainside. It was shrouded in fog. I couldn't believe my bad luck. It was like peering into
a steam bath. I thought I could just make out Washington, but I wasn't sure. I waited for
a long time, but nothing happened. And then, just as I was about to give up and depart,
the fog mercifully drifted away and there they were-Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and
Teddy Roosevelt, staring glassily out over the Black Hills.
The monument looked smaller than I had expected. Everybody says that. It's just that po-
sitioned as you are well below the monument and looking at it from a distance of perhaps
a quarter of a mile, it looks more modest than it is. In fact, Mount Rushmore is enormous.
Washington's face is b0 feet high, his eyes 11 feet wide. If they had bodies, according to a
sign on the wall, the Rushmore figures would be 465 feet tall.
