Wait until the train goes by
The eventual obligation, when orbiting a major tourist attraction, is to visit. So, in mid-morning, we joined the queue for the parking area, before climbing the stairs to stand in awe of the grandeur before us. Four faces, etched into the granite before I was ever born.
I’m from another country, and we don’t mythologize about our political class in quite this manner. National This and National That. I had to know if the National Park status was conferred before the creation of the National Monument. Still unsure. What I did learn is that the iconic footage from Hitchcock’s masterpiece, North By Northwest, wasn’t created here. You don’t get to do fun stuff in National territory.
I wandered, until my ability to absorb any more text on the inspiration here saw me backtrack cross trail to the parking lot (privately operated, actually). We skipped forward through lunch and detoured into the SDSRM (state rail museum). They have live steam and static displays. And as we visited a nearby grocery to replenish my grapes, the train roared through town (a very quiet roar from the 2-6-6-2T Mallet). Of special note, to me at least, an operational 44-tonner, on another siding.
Another find, this afternoon: Candyland, a sales point about the same size as a hockey rink, with all kinds of novel items. Try to imagine chocolate coated pickle spears, or chocolate coated bacon. I had a big cone of ice cream…
SD is so much more than a rectangle on a road map. We’ve been out to the countryside, among the boulders and the pines. Worth the visit!
