Day Seventeen: Estes Park to Custer via Mount Rushmore

Today was a long day of driving, as we planned to travel from Estes Park in Colorado to a place called Custer in South Dakota. We made another early start, setting off from Estes Park at around 6am and heading up through Colorado towards Wyoming.

The scenery in this part of Wyoming was not going to win any prizes for the most exciting that we've seen so far on this trip.

We drove through mile after mile after mile of grassland.

We stopped outside the town of Cheyenne for breakfast at another branch of Denny's, the diner restaurant that we'd eaten at while in Tuba City on Monday. It was just as delicious second time around After Cheyenne, we decided to make a brief detour into another new state: Nebraska.

There wasn't a lot to see in Nebraska. At least, not in this bit of it. There were maybe slightly more trees than in Wyoming.

We had a long way to drive today without going to Nebraska, so after a few miles we turned around and headed back into Wyoming.

Back to the grasslands!

It's hard to keep track of how long you've been driving for when there are no distinctive features in the landscape, but eventually we made it to South Dakota.

The landscape started to liven up a bit once we crossed the state line.

There were some hills...

...and then some bigger looking mountains in the distance.

We stopped in a small place called Hot Springs for what has probably been the worst meal of this trip so far. We ate at a Pizza Hut, because there weren't a lot of other options, but when the pizza came it tasted like cardboard. We'd opted for a thin and crispy base, but we were given a plastic knife and fork to eat it with, which didn't really work!

After Hot Springs we didn't have too far to go until the destination we were aiming for: Mount Rushmore. As we were driving along the main road, Tim suddenly caught sight of a head carved into the rock and we knew we were on the right lines.

It cost $10 to park at Mount Rushmore, which wasn't covered by our National Parks pass. We didn't regret paying it once we left the car park and got our first glimpse of the view.

There are four presidents depicted on the Mount Rushmore memorial: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

We followed a short trail around the site which gave us views of the carvings from different angles. From this direction we had a good view of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

A couple of people saw us taking photos and kindly offered to take one of us together

Construction of the memorial began in 1927, with the carving of the presidents' faces completed by the late 1930s. The original plan was to depict all the presidents from head to waist, but the project ran out of funding before they got much past the heads. You can see here just the beginning of a coat on George Washington.

It was a really unique place to visit, though tiring to walk around in what felt like very oppressive heat this afternoon.

We were glad to get back to the air-conditioning car for the final part of our journey towards Custer. We're staying tonight in a place called State Game Lodge within Custer State Park. A state park is different to a national park, so our national parks pass isn't valid, and we had to pay a $20 entry fee when we arrived at the hotel.

Our room is nice and spacious - again with a surplus bed.