COSMOS & RUSHMORE (Day 2 - part 4)

Finally came feeding time for the red foxes.

Red foxes can live up to 6 years in the wild and 9 years in captivity.

A magpie inches closer and closer to the food...

... and eventually scores a piece. Unfortunately another fox who tried to eat wasn't as lucky and got chased off.

Defending against the food bully

An Arctic fox keeps to the shade. These animals live in some of the most extreme cold on the planet, but they do not start to shiver until the temperature drops to -60F!

River otters mostly eat fish, but they'll also eat crayfish, frogs and even waterfowl. This magpie had better hope the otters don't decide to add it to the menu!

Not the most graceful eater!

We drove out to the Cosmos Mystery Area. This is where the laws of physics appear not to apply. It was great fun! Water looked like it flowed uphill, trees seemed to curve the wrong way, and it was quite difficult to walk upright! We were asked not to share too many photos as to keep the mystery alive. So here are just a couple teasers.

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial was sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum. This spot was chosen because of its higher quality of granite. Originally known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, the mountain was renamed after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, during a prospecting expedition in 1885.

After securing federal funding, construction on the 60-foot tall sculptures began in 1927, and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Upon Gutzon Borglum's death in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over construction.

Map of the area (click for a larger image)

The Avenue of Flags

We first toured the visitor center.

Honeycombing was the process of drilling shallow holes close together. This weakened the rock so that precise amounts of granite could then be removed using a hammer and chisel.

Amazingly enough, with 400 workers over the course of 14 years, there was not a single fatality and no major injuries.

The carving required a small village on the mountain top... the winch house, a repair shop for tools, sheds to store dynamite, shelter from sudden storms, a landing for the tram car, etc.

A drill bit would only last 30 minutes due to the extremely hard granite. The workers went though 400 bits per day. There had to be a blacksmith on site in order to continually make and sharpen them.

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