Every single one of us has some type of bucket list, a list of activities or experiences we want to

complete before we leave this earth. Common things that appear on bucket lists are things like

snorkeling in a reef, swimming with sharks, riding in a hot air balloon, seeing the pyramids in

Egypt, or seeing all seven continents. While I have never sat down and actually wrote out a bucket

list, though now I think I might.

It's nice when you do things you've always wanted to do, like go to Disney World, swim in a sonote, or go to the top of the Washington Monument.

One thing I've always wanted to do is visit Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial for our international listeners is a massive sculpture carved

into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The sculpture's roughly 60-foot-high

granite faces depict U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt,

and Abraham Lincoln. An added bonus to visiting Mount Rushmore is that it's situated in the Black Hills National Forest.

President Grover Cleveland established the Black Hills National Forest in 1897 as the Black Hills Forest Reserve.

On the USDA website, you can read all about the history of the Black Hills and about how in its second century,

the USDA Forest Service

manages its 1.2 million acres of public lands for a diversity of wildlife and fish, recreation,

water production, livestock grazing, timber harvesting, wilderness, and other uses.

And that timbered mountains of the Black Hills National Forest continue 10 to 40 miles beyond the South Dakota border into Wyoming and covers an area of about 125 miles long and 65 miles wide.

While the trails and fishing opportunities sound like an outdoors person's playground, it's also home to wildlife that are dangerous, winter temperatures that are well below freezing, and darkness that can envelop you at night.

For an experienced hiker, some of the trails can be dangerous.

For a novice hiker, they can be deadly.

It's within the area of Black Hills National Forest that many people believe a little girl disappeared.

But with no body, and not a lot to go on, we really don't know where she is.

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