South Dakota Part 2: Mt Rushmore

After the Badlands, we drove over to stay the night at a hotel overlooking Mt Rushmore.

The scenery changes quite a bit away from the Badlands.

Unfortunately, it was a fair bit colder at Mt Rushmore - so cold, in fact, that it was snowing, and the view of Mt Rushmore from our window looked like this.  (That rock formation that you can see the outline of in the distance is Mt Rushmore.)

The next morning we woke up to snow on the ground and -5C.  Ouch!

It wasn't snowing anymore, so you could see Mt Rushmore in the distance.  Barely.

There were some birds wandering around in the morning that we initially thought were pheasants (as SD is famous for them), but later discovered are probably female wild turkeys.

Not only pheasants - some deer were wandering around the grounds as well.  They don't seem to mind the cold.

And here it was - Mt Rushmore.  It is even more ridiculous in person.  Supposedly the monument is to the 4 presidents and what they did for America, which was founding (Washington), expanding (Jefferson purchased half of the country from the French in 1803 called the Louisiana Purchase), Theodore Roosevelt developing (Theodore Roosevelt promoted construction of the Panama Canal to help US trade), and preservation (Lincoln ended the Civil War).

The best part of going on a day when it snowed is that George Washington looks like he's worked up a bit of a sweat there.  I didn't know but apparently the plan was for the monument to be much bigger and include their bodies as well - until they ran out of cash.

 In case you're wondering,  yes, it did really snow, and yes, it was pretty cold.

There are 5 parts to this series - this is part 2.  You can also read part 1, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

South Dakota Part 1: The Badlands

Our visas expired in October, so we had to leave Canada and come back in through the International Airport.  We decided to go to see Mt Rushmore in South Dakota for the long weekend (as our visas expired on a Thursday).  To our surprise, there were lots of other things to do in South Dakota as well!

Stephen's Opa told us a story about the Wall Drug Store - it's in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town in South Dakota, and it was a failing business until they put up signs on the highways nearby saying "Free Ice Water at the Wall Drug Store".  It saved the business and became a huge thing - apparently it was such a big thing that troops in World War II were putting Wall Drug Store signs up in Europe.  Nowadays it's a massive tourist trap selling all sorts of crap, of course.

The Badlands National Park.  Apparently 69 million years ago the whole of the middle of North America was an ocean - over time, the water left and various rivers and flood plains left deposits of different minerals there.  In the last 500,000 years, erosion has started to wear away at the deposits, and that's how we can see the distinctive layered patterns.

The strangest part is that the whole plain is completely flat - except for these rock formations.  Completely dead flat.

Look out for the Rattlesnakes!  Luckily it was too cold for us to see any.  At the start of October it was 5 degrees C in the middle of the day.

The coolest thing is that the lines from the different layers show up so clearly that it tricks and confuses your eyes.

We went for a couple of km long walk through some of the rocks, including a climb of about 50m up a ladder made of logs.  The funniest part of America is that the society is so litigious... but then you go to a National Park and you can climb 50m up the side of a cliff and wander around on top of the cliff and there are no railings or warning signs or anything.

Stephen found a hole to hang out in.  We have no idea where this hole came from or why it was there.

So we are pretty sure that South Dakota is where the Windows XP desktop wallpaper came from - doesn't that look exactly the same?  It was really disconcerting - I would turn around and jump because I felt like I was inside the computer.

Us in the Badlands!

There were plenty of animals hanging around in the Badlands as well - these are mountain goats.

That tiny little dot in the middle of the plateau is a bison.  I spotted it from that far away!

Here's a bison from a bit closer.  There were warning signs up everywhere that said not to get out of your car because they will charge you.

This is a prairie dog.  There were heaps of them wandering around in prairie dog villages - foraging near their holes.  They weren't scared of the car, but as soon as we opened the door and got out, they ran away.

There are 5 parts to this series - this is part 1.  Here's part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Ottawa

We travelled to Ottawa for a weekend to run the Army Run Half Marathon there.  Stephen clocked his fastest timed run of 87 minutes (for the 21.1km race).  I was struggling with ITBS in my knee and had to walk after the 11km mark, but still made it in under 2:30.

Once again, I don't have great photos - only a few taken with my camera phone.

Ottawa was grey and raining on our first day there - not particularly welcoming.  We went to see the parliament building, which I unfortunately neglected to take a photo of the outside of.

Inside their House of Commons.  They use the same system as Australia and England.  Interestingly, the tour guide told us that the Queen isn't actually allowed into this room at all - she can't go past the entrance door.

Inside the Senate.  That's the Queen and Prince Phillip's chairs up there.

Inside the library.  Apparently at one stage the whole of the Canadian parliament building was finished like this in wood - but there was a huge fire and the whole parliament building burned down except for this room (because someone remembered to shut the huge solid iron safety doors).  The rest of the building is made of stone now.

The Rideau Canal.

Chateau Laurier - it's apparently a hotel.  Love the architecture though.

Stephen with a giant polar bear.

After the run, we needed to refuel with some calories, so we accompanied some local friends to a poutinerie in Gatineau.  Ottawa-Gatineau is a dual town sitting across two provinces (like Albury-Wodonga) - Ottawa on the Ontario side and Gatineau on the Quebec side.  Apparently you can only get good poutine in Quebec.  This was pretty good poutine, although I am pretty sure it was big enough to cause multiple heart attacks.  We manged to finish most of it!

NYC V2

I'm going to be catching up on the last few months of travel of the next couple of days, where I have photos.  Kicking it off is the trip we took to New York City in September, with Stephen's Mum.  The photos are all taken with my camera phone, so please excuse the quality.

We stayed in a very expensive and very run-down hotel called the Paramount which was fairly close to Times Square.  What they don't tell you is that their standard room's bed is this size:

And Stephen is a skinny guy.  It's a single bed that they put 2 pillows on and sell as a room for 2 people.  Go somewhere better - the Paramount Hotel is really dodgy and not worth the money.

We spent some time walking on the High Line, which is an old aboveground railway line that has been converted into a walking path and garden.  You can see some pretty cool things from it, like the "High Line Zoo".

Street art from the High Line.

Patriotic cement mixer.

Lawn on the High Line.   It definitely stands out in the rest of NYC.

The Brooklyn Bridge.   Stephen was obsessed with walking over it.

 Walking along the Brooklyn Bridge.

Stephen's Mum had lost a lot of weight living in Vietnam, so we decided to take her to a Southern BBQ restaurant to help her regain her lost pounds.  The restaurant we chose was a BBQ market place and the portions were not small.  This was a small pack and included 100g of brisket, a pork rib, a beef rib and a quarter chicken, plus two sides of collard greens and bourbon sweet potato mash.  It was delicious (but there was no room for dessert).

We took the long subway trip out to Coney Island to check it out.  It was pretty run-down, but we had a nice walk around.

Apparently we had just missed the annual hot dog eating contest - apparently the male winner ate 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes and the female ate 45.  Ah, America.

We went for burgers at the famous Shake Shack, which were pretty tasty although quite small.  Not quite sure it was worth the 45 minute queue.  

NYC as seen from the Staten Island Ferry on the way back to Manhattan.  The tall building in the left third of the photo is the new One World Trade Center, built to replace the Twin Towers.  It's already the tallest building in NYC at the time of this photo, and it's probably got another 30-40% of its height left to be built after this photo was taken.