BOXES 49-50: Grand Tetons and Mount Rushmore.

Those strangers somewhat get in the way of our view of the Grand Tetons, but they do provide some perspective and color. I imagine I took the picture hastily at first excitement of seeing the mountains from this viewing spot; my next shot is unobstructed:

My friend Gary and I had driven southward from Yellowstone Park to see the Tetons before heading back toward the Dakotas and Gary's new home in Minot. Our drive to that viewing point from the cabin where we'd stayed the night before was spectacular in itself:

And when we took our eyes off the distant mountains, the wildflowers up close were pretty fine too, as you see in the photo with Gary above. After the lookout point I took only two more shots of the Tetons as we headed eastward and out of the park:

The drive toward the Black Hills of South Dakota took us through Wyoming's Wind River Canyon and other places I can't identify now. It was one of the most spectacularly scenic drives I'd ever taken, and here is the evidence, several of the photos taken from the car window as Gary drove:

A number of shots show us entering, driving through, or exiting from a canyon:

We reached the Black Hills before sunset, but I have only one blurry view of pine trees to mark our arrival. The next morning we were touring the caverns in Wind Cave National Park:

The drive from the caverns to Mount Rushmore was more varied and dramatic than I had expected, with very unusual rock formations and one very narrow one-lane passage. On an upland stretch of meadow we caught sight of a herd of bison: more exotic wildlife for us urban types.

Our first view of the Mount Rushmore stone faces was unexpected and indeed surreal:

The full-on view was as strange and weirdly compelling as you might expect. (The following photo is cropped and hence a bit soft-focused.)

I had expected that the visitors' center would look exactly like the scene in North By Northwest where Eva Marie Saint pretends to shoot Cary Grant--but it didn't. In days before HD TVs and freeze-frameable DVDs, it was not so easy to tell built sets and special effects from real locations. (I remember, in the 1980s, a well-known film professor and Hitchcock expert telling me she had made a special trip to the California mission where key scenes in Vertigo take place, and was shocked to see that the tower on the mission church quite simply didn't exist: all matte paintings and a built set.)

At least there was a wall of window panes where I could take my own photo:

I also wanted to get a shot of the front of Gary's car below the faces, as in North By Northwest:

But that must have been either a special effect or a positioning of the camera and choice of lens that was not an option for me, so the best Gary could do was to take a pic of me below--well below--the famous faces:

The last shot I have of the trip is a glimpse of a Black Hills sunset.

The next morning we drove northward back to Minot. Another time during my visit we took a drive north to the Canadian border, just to see what the terrain looked like and to say we had set foot in Manitoba; I didn't take any photos but remember the land to be flat with lots of tumbleweed blowing past. And then it was back on the train to Cleveland.