Rushmore Caves & Presidential Wax Museum - Pre-Rushmore Activities #2 & 3

Since our final stop of the day was going to be Mount Rushmore, which prominently features Presidents, we decided to go first through Rushmore Cave and then the Presidential Wax Museum.

The cave is about 5 miles away from the monument itself, and is a naturally formed cave.  It all started as an ocean.  Then stuff died, sank, and disintegrated.  All those disintegrated fish bits eventually got smooshed together and formed limestone.  A few million years later, the Black Hills Uplift happened.  This was when the granite layer under all the fish was forced upwards, through the fishy limestone, due to tectonic forces.  As a result of all this moving and shaking, the Rushmore Cave system was formed.

It was a bit chilly in there, but the stalactites (which has a "C" for ceiling) and stalagmites ("G" for ground) were nifty.  I've been through caves before, but none with legitimate, and still growing, stalactites & stalagmites.  There were also some helictites, which I didn't know existed until today.  Since our tour guide did a wonderful job memorizing the script, but didn't seem to know much beyond that, I looked up what a helictite was later: "an irregular stalactite with branching convolutions or spines," or, "a speleothem whose origin is similar to that of a stalactite or stalagmite but that angles or twists in an irregular fashion."  So, in summary, a helictite is a crazy stala-ctite/gmite.

Following our spelunking adventures, we went a bit more patriotic and toured the Presidential Wax Museum in Keystone, South Dakota.  All the Presidents were there, most of them in vignettes showing important moments in their time in office.  I was waiting for a few of them to get up and walk around they were so realistic!  However, that was only the older Presidents.  The more recent ones didn't look as good, though, particularly Ronald Reagan, George Bush (41), Bill Clinton, and current President Barack Obama.  Rich had a good theory on this: we've seen these people from every possible angle on TV so many times, that we know what they look like.  As such, any flaws (like Reagan's hair) are noticeable.

On the other hand, how am I supposed to know what Millard Fillmore really looked like?  I've seen a portrait, and the wax figure looks like the portrait, so it's good enough for me.

The one recent President whose likeness was good was W.  His body was wrong, but the face was right.  It was a nifty exhibit, and it really got us in the yay-America mood as we headed to Mount Rushmore to celebrate Independence Day.

--Karyn