Day 2 - North Dakota & South Dakota

We hit the road from Billings, MT at 7 am, driving through the corner of North Dakota.  They had turn-outs at the ND/SD border so we could take good pictures by each state sign.  From there, we headed into South Dakota to the Mt Rushmore National Monument.

What a sight!  I was surprised by how beautiful the Black Hills area was.  It was so green with rock out-croppings and pine trees.  The Mt Rushmore experience was awesome.  We walked the short trail below the monument and took lots of pictures from different views of the monument.  I did not realize that the Monument was started in 1927 and not finished until 1940.  It would have been nice to see the lighting of the monument at night, but we had 3 1/2 hours driving plus another time change today.

Photo from Boomsbeat.com
Black Hills, SD

We finished the day driving east across SD to Chamberlain for the night.  There is a good pizza place across from our hotel, so we ate a late dinner and the kids swam until closing at 10pm.  Tomorrow will be another long driving day, taking us through Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.  No stops along the way tomorrow, just drive, drive, drive!

I forgot to bring in the cameras tonight, so I'll add pictures later.