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Published: August 20th 2007
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Avenue of Flags
Every State's flag is here with the year they joined the Union. The journey out of North Dakota to Rapid City was L-O-N-G! Unlike North Dakota and Montana there is not much variation in the scenery and the landscape is very boring. A lot of scrub grass, the occasional herd of cows and scattered groups of deer. Approaching Rapid City however, I started to climb and the scenery started to change, lots more trees—lots more! Upon arrival here at Shadows of Rushmore Resort I browsed their brochures and saw one for a narrated bus trip to Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park and the Crazy Horse Monument. The trip included an all you can eat breakfast and a barbecue supper with a western show thrown in. So I decided to sign up for it.
The tour company sent a car to pick me up at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and off I went. Their headquarters is at Fort Hayes which was used as the film set for the Kevin Costner movie “Dancing with Wolves”. The breakfast was typical for this part of the world; sausage, biscuits and spiced gravy, or sausage, pancakes and syrup, or both if you wanted; it was all very good.
The tour bus, a 21 year old retired Greyhound
The Monument
From left to right: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln bus, left at 8:50 a.m. The driver’s name was Matt; he was dressed like Wyatt Earp, and played the part to a‘t’. He was born in this area and information just flowed from him as he was driving. Here is a brief portion: Called the Black Hills because of the darkness of the ponderosa pine trees. Like a good portion of Colorado the Black Hills of South Dakota were formed by volcanic activity a couple of billion years ago. There are 14000 miles of caves running through the Black Hills, there are no natural lakes and the highest peak is 7242’ above sea level. In the early days French explorers stuck French flags and claimed sovereignty wherever they went so the Black Hills belonged to the French, then in 1803 Thomas Jefferson negotiated with Napoleon and purchased the territory for 2 cents/acre. (They didn’t know there was gold in them there hills!)
In 1927 the son of a Danish immigrant, a man by the name of Gutzon Borglum was commissioned to carve a memorial in the side of one of the mountains. The first plan was to take the Cathedral Peaks and carve folk heroes, but the rock there is
Close
This is as close as a person can get. You can even see Roosevelt's glasses. How did they carve those? too soft so they looked for another location. The outside rock on Mount Rushmore is soft but the inside is granite which made it perfect for the purpose. Borglum suggested that he carve the image of the four presidents into the rock. One of the largest sculptural projects in existence, the memorial was also a great engineering feat. Borglum had nearly finished the 60-ft. (18.3-m) heads of the four presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt) when he died, and the work was finished (1941) by his son Lincoln. The carved faces are visible for 60 mi (97 km). In all, it took 14 years to complete the figures, which during the summer are visited by more than 20,000 tourists daily.
They have really done a great job of making this into a monument and not a commercial venture. The grounds are beautiful, and there is no entrance fee. I was very impressed.
Cathedral Mountain and the Needles Highway
We left Mount Rushmore and headed to Custer State Park, which encompasses 71,000 acres. There are 1500 buffalo which roam throughout the park as well as prong horn antelope, deer and wild burros. We weren’t lucky enough to see the main
Lyn at Mt. Rushmore
I took a photo of this nice older couple so they volunteered to take one of me - you can see by my expression that I wasn't too sure he could operate my camera buffalo herd but did see a couple of maverick bulls, plenty of antelope, deer and the wild burros. The park is very diverse, we stopped at the State Game Lodge for lunch which was very nice; there are woodlands, rushing streams, and rocky peaks. The Needles Highway is very aptly named, there are so many tight switch-back turns that were difficult for the bus to negotiate. The road became narrower and narrower with three tunnels that were unbelievable. I would have been nervous in the car. (Matt had to flip in the bus mirrors to negotiate the last of them. Quite a crowd gathered at the far end to observe the buses progress—Matt having quite a sense of humour, stopped the bus and put the hazard lights on!)
Our next stop was the Crazy Horse Memorial. It is huge, 10 times the size of Mount Rushmore, the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started it on June 3, 1948, and it is still at least 20 years from completion. I have included a picture of the way it is now with a complete view overlay. Ziolkowski died in 1982 and his wife and children are continuing work on the memorial. They blast away
Cathedral Peak
Unfortunately, even though it was a beautiful day, the smoke from the forest fires burning in Idaho and Montana is very visible on these photos. thousands of tones of rock every day. Crazy Horse was the warrior chief who defeated and killed General George Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The Memorial's mission is to honor the culture, tradition and living heritage of North American Indians and one of their heroes. The 563-foot-high mountain carving-in-the-round will dominate the horizon. The closest you can get to the sculpture is 1 mile, so you can see by my pictures how big it is.
From Crazy Horse we returned to Fort Hayes for supper and the show, the bbq beef with all the trimmings was great, and the show was both funny and toe-tapping. All around a very enjoyable day.
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Al
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You are sure getting around. Pics are great. Don't rush back to Texas just yet. There is another biggie storm after Dean. Also Okla is underwater on the TV news.