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Keystone, South Dakota

I arrive at the entry gate. Bummer, I have to pay $8 for parking, I was hoping my annual National Park Pass was going to cover it. Seems there's a private company that manages the parking garages and the $8 is for them, not for the National Park Service.

I'm told the parking pass is good for the rest of the calendar year.

The parking garage complex is pretty impressive, it's hard to say how many cars it can handle, probably thousands.

The entrance way into the memorial.

My first good view of the memorial. Mt Rushmore is actually named after a lawyer, of all things. Apparently some lawyer with the last name of Rushmore named the outcropping of rock after himself when asked by some surveyor what the name of the rock was. Rushmore proclaimed the rock didn't have a name so he named it after himself and it stuck.