I think Mount Rushmore pretty much speaks for itself so I won’t be listing any facts or stats about it. However I figured that I could at least share some of the photos that we took during our visits. The monument is an absolutely amazing site to see. Each time we passed it while driving around South Dakota it was hard not to stop for another visit.

If you ask me, I think that every American should visit Mount Rushmore at least once.

We ended up visiting Mount Rushmore three times during our trip. Each visit being at a different time of the day.

Our first visit was in the evening of our first day of our trip. We arrived in Keystone planning to go for dinner before heading to Mount Rushmore but the lady at our hotel suggested that we go straight there to see the light show. Seeing it all lit up was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. While the light show wasn’t much of a show at all (there were speeches, a video and the lighting at the end), visiting Rushmore at night is definitely worthwhile just for the experience and photo-ops if you have the time.

I’d recommend first seeing the site during the day but this was how our schedule worked best for us.

We followed our nighttime visit by going again the following morning. The site was crowded again and it was really hot out. Lucas fell asleep so we couldn’t get a good picture of him. This was the reason that we decided to make a third visit. Our third visit was on the last day of our trip. We went late in the afternoon and the site seemed a bit less crowded. This was probably the best time to go. We also got lucky- Lucas was wide awake and did a great job smiling for some of the pictures.

It would’ve been frustrating to end our trip without a decent picture of Lucas at Mount Rushmore. I’m not so sure when we’ll be visiting again…

Mount Rushmore was a place where I had to get some good jumping shots. With the site being so busy, it took a lot of patience to get some decent shots.

For more details about Mount Rushmore, visit the National Parks Service site here.