RAPID CITY - When the television lights flash on at 5 a.m. Thursday at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Dave Price will be wide awake and ready to greet America, as he does every morning on the CBS News' "The Early Show."

"I love it," the "Early Show" weather anchor said of his early morning schedule.

"When I first started in this business, people used to say to me, 'If things really go well, someday do you hope to do the news in the evening?'" he said, laughing. "I think morning TV is the most fun - to be able to help get people up and motivated in the morning."

The show airs from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on the East Coast, so early is a relative term for someone who has broadcast live from Tokyo, New Zealand, Alaska and Florida.

If you go

What: CBS News' "The Early Show"

When: The show airs from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., Thursday, Aug. 9, but organizers ask that people arrive at 4:15 a.m.

Where: The Grand View Terrace at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

More info: Please book in advance by calling 1-212-975-0032, or by e-mail: earlyshowatrushmore@gmail.com. Let the producers know how many people will be in your party.

"We are numb to the clock changing," he said. "It always reads 7 o'clock on my watch when we go on the air."

Price has been the weather anchor and a feature reporter for CBS News' "The Early Show" since July 2003. In addition to in-studio forecasts and reports, Price entertains the crowds live on the plaza outside the CBS studios in New York. He has visited troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has broadcast from cities across the country.

Price's Great American Vacation series brings him to Mount Rushmore National Memorial on Thursday morning. With a live audience as a backdrop, he will broadcast from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. from Rushmore's Grand View Terrace.

He has never been to Mount Rushmore. "I've wanted to go there ever since I was a kid, and it's taken me 40 years to make it there," he said.

Price said he is also looking forward to getting a taste of the Sturgis motorcycle rally. In fact, he is working on getting a motorcycle license before he arrives. During the program, he hopes to show America a little bit of the Sturgis motorcycle rally, a little of Mount Rushmore and a lot of South Dakota.

"We're excited to showcase this community and this great state. Hopefully, we can tell the rest of the country the next time they're planning to choose a vacation spot that this is a gem that they really ought to put on their agenda."

That is music to the ears of people such as Bill Honerkamp, head of the Black Hills Badlands & Lakes Association. He said the tourism group couldn't pay for that kind of exposure, even if it could afford to.

"It's live, it's real, and I have no doubt in my mind that Dave Price will go ga-ga over the memorial. He'll have lots of thoughts about it, and he'll share those thoughts with the country."

This is the sixth stop on the 2007 Great American Vacation tour. The well-traveled Winnebago from "The Early Show" has pulled into Key West, Fla., the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Savannah, Ga., Niagara Falls, N.Y., and South Padre Island, Texas.

After Mount Rushmore, the Great American Vacation heads to Aspen, Colo., Mackinac Island, Mich., and Bar Harbor, Maine.

"I've got to be honest. These trips that we do are very selfishly driven. All of my producers and I sat in a room as we started to plan this and said, 'Where would we like to go if we had a vacation?' … We're living our vacation on CBS's bill."

The Winnebago generally travels without Dave Price aboard. He must return to New York between Great American Vacation appearances. But Price said he still sees a lot of America and meets a lot of Americans on the tours.

He said he is impressed by America's diversity, the foods, the accents and the topography. "Yet as diverse as this country is, there's a much broader sense of community. There's a common bond which unites us as Americans, which is really so great to experience in person," he said.

Contact Dan Daly at 394-8421 or dan.daly@rapidcityjournal.com