When my daughter and I set off on a hastily planned, pre-college road trip through the Great American West, we didn’t know thousands of motorcyclists participating in the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally would be accompanying us, roaring along the scenic highways in their black tees, denim, and leather, their silver-and-black bikes lined up like tinned sardines on the main streets in South Dakota and Wyoming. Or perhaps I should say we accompanied them in our rented Subaru Outback — black at least! — just as eager to ride under those big, open skies and visit iconic American scenery like Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

I have a thing for visiting national parks, and while Mount Rushmore is a national memorial, I liked checking it off my list. Located in the rugged and surprisingly beautiful Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota, Mount Rushmore is near two national parks, Badlands and Wind Cave. I woefully passed the signs for those, regretful that we didn’t have time to stop. Next time!

My main reference for Mount Rushmore has long been Hitchcock’s thriller North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint scramble across the presidents’ faces. Seeing it in person, after passing through a processional entrance lined with flags from all 50 states, felt uber-American. It’s an icon, like the Statue of Liberty.

Grand as the monument and its avenue are, however, I wasn’t moved by Mount Rushmore as I always am by the Statue of Liberty, with her torch uplifted in victory over tyranny, promising freedom and welcome to generations of immigrants. I admired the ambition of Mount Rushmore’s sculptor, but I also felt that his vision was flawed. The mountain should never have been carved up. The natural beauty of the Black Hills is magnificent and all-American on its own terms. Iconic though it may now be, Mount Rushmore’s sculpture irreversibly defaced (pun intended) the mountain.

The immortalized presidents, sculpted in the 1930s by Gutzon Borglum, are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. We leaned on a railing and gazed at them for a few minutes. The scale is immense and impressive. I idly wondered why they were not sculpted in order of birth.

I’m glad to have seen Mount Rushmore on our mother-daughter road trip, but we both were more awestruck by the beauty of the region, with its craggy hills and rolling prairies, than anything made by man. That’s the real America. That and all those bikers and tourists on the road, all of us burning up the highway to take it all in.

Up next: Our ultimate destination, Devils Tower in Wyoming. For a look back at our visit to The Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, Colorado, click here.

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