I assumed most of these tourist-fed businesses vanished leaving only faded signs and strangely shaped buildings to remind travelers of a time when hucksters tempted travelers with the unusual, gruesome and queer. These places did not vanish - they just moved to South Dakota:

Flintstone Village and Campground (See Dino!), Christmas Ranch (Over 10,000 ornaments every day!), Old McDonald's Petting Zoo (Pet the Animals!  They're Friendly!), Reptile Gardens, The Original Crazy Horse Crystal Caves (Closest Cave to Mount Rushmore!), Thunder Mine (A Real Live Gold Mine!), Presidential Wax Museum (From George W to George W, It will Renew Your Patriotic Spirit!). 

The biggest of all the roadside attractions, the most over hyped bit of gawkery, the item with the most promise and hence the biggest disappointment:  Mount Rushmore. 

Mount Rushmore.  In the lexicon of American idolatry, it ranks right up at the top.  I admit, I bought the myth.  I put it on the agenda.  I spent the night in Rapid City to see it.  It is big - but not as big as the gift shop and ice cream parlor the Park Service constructed at the base, or the parking lot ($8 per car, please), or most of the visitors who gawk for eleven seconds before heading to buy their Monumental Cones with Presidential Sprinkles.

Of course, if Mount Rushmore doesn't impress you, you can choose from any of the options above, several casinos, two water parks and two miniature golf courses, all within a five mile radius of the famous sculpture. So much roadside kitsch concentrated in such a small area is like being force fed a salad bowl of chocolate icing. 

Having performed the requisite genuflecting before the sculptures of past presidents (lest the Homeland Security Monitors detect my failing level of Patriotic Fervor), I scurried to the parking lot, zoomed around motor homes, SUVs and overweight children and headed south.

I suppose had I a companion today with whom to make witty and biting remarks about the tourist orgy, I might have been happier.  However, I only had myself and a bad selection of discs in the unreachable CD changer.  Nothing can be worse than Bette Midler singing "The Rose" as you pull away from Mount Rushmore. 

I pointed the MINI southward in search of Wind Caves National Park.  According to my Holiday Inn in-room manual, the caves promised mind-boggling stalagmites, stalagmites and rangers in tight pants.  Whether through my own incompetence, Bette-midler induced psychosis, or South Dakota's deliberately bad signage, the only caves I found were occupied by prairie dogs.  I was defeated.  It was time to go back to the hotel.

Then, rounding a corner at 35 miles per hour (not the speed limit but the speed of the motor home in front of me), I saw it:  a gleaming helicopter.  Sitting on a pad beside the road with its blades slowing chopping the afternoon air, it offered hope for the day.  I plunked down my money, climbed aboard, and we soared above South Dakota.  As Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain passed below, I thought to myself:  "Drag Nun Killed in Fiery Copter Crash:  Pat Robertson says God Does Punish Queers." 

God, however, filled all the waitstaff positions in South Dakota with cute men with nice butts - and over dinner that can make up for a whole lot of really bad sculpture.

Tomorrow...Orange City, Iowa...