Bad postcards of the week:

What I learned in South Dakota
From:  The Grand Rapids Press

Plenty of parking at Mount Rushmore

If you want to attract tourists, you have to build big stuff.

That’s one of the things I learned during our epic family road trip to South Dakota.

We stopped at several fun places in Iowa and Minnesota along the way to the ultimate destination, the glorious Mount Rushmore.

South Dakota, we learned, is one of those states with more U.S. senators than representatives, with just 800,000 people. There is a chance that during some stretches, we saw more Wall Drug signs than other travelers.

Here are some fun facts we learned along the way.

The Mitchell Corn Palace is the only corn palace in the world, according to the nice folks who work there. The palace is part museum of corn history and artwork and part arena. It’s decorated each year with themed murals made of corn and hay.

Fun fact: The inside murals can last up to 10 years, but the outdoor versions have to be replaced after just over a year because birds treat them like a giant buffet.

Then we stopped in Chamberlain, slipping into the South Dakota Hall of Fame to see the Sparky Anderson display before heading over to the Akta Lakota Museum.

The museum is an an outreach of the St. Joseph’s Indian School to educate about the Northern Plains Indian culture through artifacts and artwork.

Interesting fact: The St. Joseph Indian School was opened in 1927 with the goal of raising Indian children in Western culture. That focus was eventually dropped, with the Indian culture now celebrated.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum is Wall Drug. We intended to stay a couple minutes and check out the postcards. We were there about two hours, unable to resist the giant jackalopes, piano-playing mechanical gorillas and acres of kitsch.

Fun fact: There are 87 signs advertising Wall Drug between Sioux Falls and Wall, and you can still get free ice water -- the original pitch used to entice travelers off the Interstate and into tiny Wall.

The next morning was reserved for Mount Rushmore, which is simply spectacular. There’s a trail that takes you to the foot of the mountain for different perspectives of the presidents.

We returned later in the evening for the lighting ceremony. As darkness crept into the Black Hills, a film about the memorial and the four presidents was projected in an amphitheater. Slowly, the lights focused on the presidents came on and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln emerged.

Then all the veterans were asked to come down to the stage, as the flag was lowered and the audience sang the national anthem. I don’t think there were many dry eyes. It is an experience I’ll never forget.

Fun fact: Jefferson started on the other side of Washington. But after 18 months of work, sculptor Gutzon Borglum decided that the rock there was of poor quality and ordered the face blasted off, starting anew on Washington’s left.

Between our Rushmore visits, we headed down the road to see the massive and incomplete Crazy Horse Memorial.

Commissioned by a Lakota elder, Korczak Ziolkowski started work on the project in 1948. Plans call for depicting Crazy Horse on a horse, pointing off into the distance. The face is complete, and other parts are sort of roughed out.

Ziolkowski died in 1982, and his children are carrying on with the project.

Fun fact: If completed, Crazy Horse would become the world's largest sculpture. Also, goats have become so used to the blasting that they are completely unafraid, according to our tour guide.

I’m all about presidents and my family indulges me, so we also visited a presidential wax museum in Keystone, S.D., and explored downtown Rapid City, where each president has his own statue on a street corner.

Shockingly, we saw far more t-shirts and trinkets for Sturgis than all the other attractions combined. I had trouble determining what, exactly, happens at Sturgis. And I asked people, too. Best I can tell, it has something to do with motorcycles and Whitesnake.

Naturally, I looked for Mount Rushmore postcards. There were many nice ones. I found these, too.

First, we have this beautiful linen (below), “Mt. Rushmore Memorial, from Spiral Bridge on Iron Mountain, Black Hills, So. Dak.”

See that little speck near the top?
That would be the subject of our Mount Rushmore postcard.

The back, in an unusual narrative, reads: “On our way to the colossal monument, we have just climbed a long hill through Black Hills’ winding roads and lo behold, all of a sudden, this world famous memorial comes into view. It is hardly believable, that tons of rocks could be carved out of a Granite mountain and produce such likenesses of our four great presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Theo. Roosevelt and Lincoln.”

It’s a colossal monument, for sure. But just because you can practically see the thing from Wyoming doesn’t mean you have to photograph it from there! Seriously, this thing could be called “Trees.”

The other postcard photograph (Picture at top of this post) , at least, appears to have been taken closer to the park – or, at least, the parking lot.

It reads: “The magnificent Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, gigantic in proportions, is sculpted to a scale of men 465 feet tall. In solid, ageless granite, famed sculptor Gutzon Borglum, has cared with infinite detail, the faces of four great American Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. This famous shrine is visited by over one million people each year and this huge parking area provides ample space for the many thousands of motor cars arriving daily during the season.”

So, this isn’t necessarily a postcard of the sculpture, it’s of the parking lot. And the way, these guys are all parked; it looks like a drive-in movie showing a rather slow-moving film.