After sundown, big-ass lamps are turned on at Mt. Rushmore to light up the mountain. I was there at about 7:30 PM this evening… clearly this is the “off season.” It was me, two Japanese chicks and a German family.
On the way from the main facility back to my motel in Hill City, I noticed the “Profile View” viewing area, which got me this:
This was a surprisingly moving experience. Not for patriotic rah-rah reasons, but because there I was on a pitch-black mountainside, with this huge-ass face off in the distance… and not a single sound *at* *all.* It was truly dead silence. No cars, machines, wind, birds, bugs… nothing. It’s been a good long while since I’ve heard silence that complete. And after a brief moment for my eyes to adjust, the night sky was every bit as filled with stars and Milky Way as it is in rural Utah… perhaps more so.
Note: these photos were prepared via the stacking process (ten images each) that I described here. Here are before-and-after detail shots.
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