Day 6 - July 4th - Custer, SD and Mt. Rushmore

Happy 4th of July.  Today started out much better.  We were staying in Custer, SD and decided to spend the morning in Custer.  They were having an Old Time Country Fourth.  Custer is such a cute, western town with a lot of charm.  Everyone there was very friendly and welcoming.  We found parking for the big behemoth and found a place to watch the parade.

 They have these bison all over the town where artists have decorated them all differently.

 Looking pretty patriotic.

 Check out his hat and boots.  He fits right in.

They even had a B1 Bomber fly over to start the parade.  What a sight.

 Waiting for the parade to start.

Fred Flintstone (the Flintstones theme park is located in Custer) 

Check out the road sign.  Very patriotic.

 At this point we love the fire department very much.

 Love the carving on the side of the fire truck.

Remember Smokey the Bear?  The kids had no clue who he was.

Jack loving the John Deere.

Next we headed off to the Crazy Horse Monument.

Now for the history lesson:

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument complex that is under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota. It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a private non-profit organization.
The memorial consists of the mountain carving (monument), the Indian Museum of North America, and the Native American Cultural Center. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles from Mount Rushmore. The sculpture's final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet (27 m) high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet (18 m) high.
The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is still far from completion.^[1] If completed, it may become the world's largest sculpture, as well as the first non-religious statue to hold this record since 1967; the last being Russia's Mamayev Monument

It truly is an amazing sight.  It drawfs Mt. Rushmore.

 Checking out a teepee.

Finally we headed off to Mt. Rushmore.  We were afraid of how bad the crowds would be here on the 4th so we wanted to arrive early. 

As you can see, there were lots of RV's already there when we arrived.

Good thing we have Sam to carry all of our stuff.

Jack in the midst of one of many meltdowns.

Love all of the state flags. 

And we had to get the patriotic fourth of July Rushmore shirts. 

While John took Sam, Grace and Katie on a hike, I took Jack to meet the Presidents.

Meeting Teddy Roosevelt

Love this picture.

Meeting Thomas Jefferson 

Meeting Abe Lincoln (he looked amazingly like the real man)

And of course George Washington

And some great pictures as the sun is starting to set.

Love this photo

 Just Beautiful.

 They called all of the veterans and current service members forward.

Taking down and folding of the flag.

From the time we started planning this trip, all John wanted to see was fireworks over Mt. Rushmore.  We based our whole schedule around that.  Unfortunately, fireworks were canceled, as they were everywhere in the area, due to an extremely high fire risk in the area.  It was still a very patriotic and moving way to spend the 4th.