The End

Mt. Rushmore. Ninety percent of the statues were "carved" using dynamite. I always pictured the sculptor hanging from a Bosun chair chiseling away at the rock. The team was so good with the dynamite that they could get within inches of the actual facial feature that they wanted to carve. Over 450,000 tons of rock were removed from the mountain. Most of that was removed so the workers could get to granite that was solid enough to carve. The granite erodes at a rate of 1 inch every 10,000 years (I'm not sure how they know that). About 400 men worked on the sculptures. No one died during the process. However, Borglum (the person commissioned to create the sculptures) died before everything was finished. His son completed the work that was left. Borglum is also the sculptor of Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Two young bull moose that were seen wandering around a state maintenance garage in Idaho or Montana. (I can't remember if we had crossed the state line yet).

Brent (second from right) and the river crew!

Olivia and Tot (his brother's name is Tater) play in the water at the take out for the Selway. The water is snow melt, but she is not one to be deterred. The swimming hole was beautiful, but I am a big chicken and did not go in!

Crescent Lake at Olympic National Park

Wildflower at Olympic

Olivia in an old growth forest. Hiking through the forest was one of the best hikes of the trip. The trees are old (some hundreds of years old) and huge. Old trees that fall become nurse trees for seedlings. The seedlings grow on top of the downed tree or a tree stump. The nurse tree provides nutrients for the growing tree so it doesn't have to compete with other growth on the forest floor. This area was used for logging a hundred years ago and the evidence of logging is still around in huge stumps and trees that were felled but never removed. Olivia thinks it would be a great place for a haunted trail!

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

We are finally getting back to normal. My friend Sara was here from Florida when we arrived Sunday. She's back home now, all the laundry is done, and we're getting back to our normal routine. School will start back soon and summer vacation will be over once again. This trip, however, will not soon be forgotten. We were gone 24 days and logged over 7,500 miles in the car. Brent spent 5 days on the Selway River. We visited ten parks (Olivia earned Junior Ranger badges at all of them): Olympic National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Arches National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis Arch), Canyonlands National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Selway-Bitterroot Forest Service Wilderness. We drove through 19 states on Interstates, scenic by-ways and long, lonely stretches of two-lane roads. Eastern Washington has more wheat than I ever care to see again. Montana and Wyoming have pasture land that never seems to end. We crossed the Columbia River, Snake River, Green River, Colorado River, Mississippi River, Missouri River, Ohio River, Selway River, Lochsa River, and Wabash River. We stayed in campgrounds, hotels, motels and cabins. The last two nights, we slept in the car (of course only Brent or I slept at a time while the other one drove). Our costs averaged $105 a day. We ate a lot of meals out of the cooler, but we did eat out some. We enjoyed several local restaurants and a few national and local chains. Two of the best restaurants are Arthur Bryant's in St. Louis and Serious Pie (pizza pie, that is) in Seattle. I have a few pictures that need to be edited. I'll complete those when we get back to SC.