Day the fourth: We rose early for a serviceable breakfast (accompanied, unfortunately, by anaemic coffee) and betook ourselves to the Mt. Rushmore visitor center, a considerably more elaborate facility than I remembered from my 1991 visit. My friends know that I am ordinarily scornful of American iconography, but there was a lump in my throat as I gazed up at the familiar visages: James Mason…Cary Grant…Leo G. Carroll…Martin Landau. We lingered for an hour and then hit the road, Rand at the wheel and Greg riding shotgun, east across South Dakota on I-90. The state’s set designers appear to have blown their budget on the Black Hills, because the scenery was pretty thin thereafter, but we did make a side trip to Mitchell SD to see the aptly-named “Corn Palace,” which looks like something a chamber of commerce might come up with if you spiked the punch with acid at the Rotary Club dinner.
After a longish day on the road we have arrived by mutual arrangement in Omaha, where we are chilling out* while waiting to touch base with Cousin Dave, a resident of this city, with whom we had made tentative (perhaps too tentative) plans to dine this evening. Tomorrow, on to Indianapolis, or rather a suburb thereof, provided the weather doesn’t interfere.
*“Chilling out” in that the room originally assigned to the men of the party lacked functional air conditioning, or even ventilation. We are native Californians all; we don't do the heat-and-humidity thing.
Above, upper: The Great Stone Faces. L-R: Mason, Grant, Carroll, Landau.
Above, lower: The Corn Palace. I am going to turn this into such a San Francisco in-joke when I get it into Photoshop.
Rand, I wish I had kept better track of your trip. Ed and I were in the Black Hills from the 7/17 until 7/22. Sorry we missed you. At least I'll see you next Friday.
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