Ever since I saw Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint hanging on for dear life to the presidential visages on Mt. Rushmore, I wanted to visit the national monument. Then Coronadans Mary Sandermann and Verda Flannery both told me in no uncertain terms to include a trip to their native state on my yearlong cross-country escapade. "You'll love the Black Hills," Mary said, her eyes wide to convey the wonder of it all. "They're breathtakingly beautiful."

And so on a late summer day, I found myself in the Black Hills of southwest South Dakota, approaching the monument from the backside, watching in anticipation as granite spires rose majestically from the pine, spruce, aspen and birch forest. Rounding a curve, I beheld George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln gazing out high above my head.

The monument appeared alabaster white before my eyes - quite in contrast to the darker, stonier framed photo that hung in my motel room in the nearby town of Custer. Turns out that my timing was impeccable: the monument had just been sand-blasted three months prior to my visit.

The idea of sculpting mountains in South Dakota was the idea of State Historian Doane Robinson, who originally envisioned carving figures of such western personalities as Lewis and Clark, Buffalo Bill Cody and Chief Red Cloud. Frankly I think that would have been preferable, but the sculptor contracted for the work, Gutzon Borglum, would have none of that. Quite the stubborn bon vivant, Borglum insisted that only presidents would be worthy of his mountain - and he declared them to symbolically represent: birth, Washington; growth, Jefferson, who was largely responsible for the Louisiana Purchase; preservation, Lincoln who preserved the nation through one of the most pivotal times in the country's history; and development, Roosevelt who had completed the Panama Canal. Roosevelt was a personal friend of Borglum and his selection at the time rightly drew criticism.

Borglum created a 1-to-12 scale model, which is still on display at the memorial. Visitors will note that much of Borglum's model was never completed, including Lincoln's left ear. Construction stretched over 14 years, from October 1927 through October 1941; 90 percent of the 450,000 tons of granite was dynamited.

The monument rises 500 feet and each face is about 60 feet from chin to top of head; each eye is 11 feet across and there's a 16-inch mole on Lincoln's right side. There's lot more to the memorial - a book store, night-time concerts and lighting ceremonies, the Avenue of Flags, and ranger tours among the offerings.

After leaving the monument, I headed east on I-90 where billboards directed me to Wall Drug and its 5-cent cup of coffee. There's quite a story behind the "drug store."

In 1929 a young pharmacist and his wife, Ted and Dorothy Hustead, set up shop in the quiet farm town of Wall, South Dakota. Barely making ends meet, they waited patiently for the Mt. Rushmore monument to be completed, which they hoped would bring passing motorists to town. But by 1936, the pharmacist's wife Dorothy came up with the idea to invite travelers off the nearby highways to stop in at the drug store with a series of signs along the highway: "Get a soda, Get a root beer. Turn next corner, Just as near. Free ice water! Wall Drug." While corny, the signs did the trick. Today Wall Drug is an area tourist attraction, taking up a full block with a collage of store vignettes set inside its western motif town. There are life-sized carved wooden figures that invite photo poses. The multi-room dining room features a wide variety of meals; I chose a hot roast beef sandwich and that 5-cent cup of coffee.

At the town of Wall, I turned off to view Badlands National Park. The park consists of 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest, protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. Don't miss it.

If You Go

Mt. Rushmore National Monument: www.nps.gov/moru (800) 600-3142

Badlands National Park: Just 1½ hours from Mt. Rushmore (605) 433-5404 www.nps.gov/badl

Custer State Park, 73,000 acres and home to 1,400 bison: (800) 658-3530

Custer Chamber of Commerce: (605) 673-2244

Rapid City Chamber of Commerce: (605) 666-4896

National Forest Campgrounds: (877) 444-6777

South Dakota Tourism: www.travelsd.com