Avenue of Flags

Yes, that's the official name—accurate if unimaginative. As you approach the monument, you walk through this array of the flags of all of the US states and territories.

But what interests me more in this picture is what you don't see. I expected Mount Rushmore—and really, all of the national parks we visited—to be a lot more crowded than they were on a holiday week in July. Which isn't to say that there weren't a lot of people; there just weren't as many as we expected. And I am wondering if the falloff in international travel to the US is the reason.

I know just how they feel

The faces on Mount Rushmore seen through a zoom lens. Geology moves slowly, but the cracks are starting to show. Or maybe the South Dakota weather is drying out the Presidential complexions the way it did mine.

It was slightly cooler in Oxford today—quite pleasant when walking or sitting in the shade, less so almost anywhere indoors where the lack of air conditioning was obvious. My hotel room isn't as awful as it was yesterday after a few hours of running the fans with the door propped open, but I spent most of the evening sitting on the very pleasant deck instead.

It really is strange...

...in a way that you can't appreciate close up. It's when you're still miles away, and all of a sudden you see this crazy, lopped-off mountain standing by itself in the middle of nowhere that you think, “What the everlasting f**k is that?”

You can see why Spielberg had the aliens in Close Encounters land there. Sadly, just as I failed to find Cary Grant at Mount Rushmore, this was the only alien I saw at Devil's Tower—in the gift shop.

Devil's Tower

We cut across a corner of Wyoming going from Montana to South Dakota so we could visit Devil's Tower. If you're not going to climb it—and many crazy people do—there's not much to do except walk around and admire the behemoth from a few angles, take some pictures, and go.