Travel to Mt. Rushmore area – Saturday, July 19

We’re taking it a bit slower now. Today we made it to the Black Hills of South Dakota where Mount Rushmore it, but we didn’t do any special sight-seeing.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to describe some of our adventures with roads themselves. Today, for example, we found ourselves on the Iron Mountain Road. It’s a 17-mile scenic byway with “314 curves, 3 pigtail bridges, 3 tunnels, and 14 switchbacks.” What’s a pigtail bridge, you ask? You can see a picture on the right here or read more at the Byways website. It was great to go through that 270-degree curve only to be confronted with a one-lane blind tunnel with a sign that said, “honk before proceeding.”

Previously, in Yellowstone, we had learned that my acrophobia needs to be considered when planning routes. We had some stunning drives viewing wildlife, but they also took us up quite high on the mountain sides. It was 30 minutes (or hours?) of sheer white knuckle terror for me (“must … remember … to … breath”). I handled it mostly by slowing down to 20-25 mph and pulling over from time to time to let the funeral procession behind me pass.

I practiced some and did much better yesterday driving through the Big Horn Mountains. For all you hypermilers out there, you can get 99 mpg in certain places.

Now, back to the Iron Mountain Road today: I’m finally doing better (being hemmed in by trees all around helps), but Laura’s claustrophobia really came through today. She really doesn’t care for me driving right on the edge of the pavement nor for the narrow tunnels. (Keep that in mind and see if we take in some caves in the Black Hills while we’re here.)

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