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Published: August 14th 2009
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Every day whilst at Sturgis we went out for a ride somewhere. Except one day when suffering from really bad hangovers we just about managed to get in to Sturgis for some food.
We went to Mount Rushmore which is only about 70 miles away. I must confess at this point that I was very much looking forward to going there. It being an iconic image of the states. I was quite interested in finding out as to why the thing had been built in the first place. There is loads of interesting information on boards on why the presidents were chosen, the order, caring for the monument, loads of american history and the making of the monument. I eventually found one little plaque that said that the then senator and two other local dignitaries had come up with the idea in 1923 to attract tourists. It was started in 1927 and they never finished the repositry when work stopped in 1941 due to having run out of money due to the second world war.
The heads are modelled on people of 465 feet tall. This makes the heads 60 feet tall.
You approach from behind and wind your way up
Mount Rushmore
Looking away from the Presidents the hill. Then all of a sudden you see the first sillouette of a head, and to be perfectly honest it's a bit of a disappointment. Dont get me wrong cos it is very impressive but it just seems dwarfed by its surroundings. I was expecting something much bigger.
After an hour or so wandering around in the very nice air conditioned museum we braved the heat once again.
Should I feel guilty for not wearing a helmet and just a t shirt on the bike? But my god it was hot. I kept a couple of bottles of water in the panniers which was not much fun as they were at 30°C.....
We then went to the Crazy Horse monument. It was commisioned in 1948 by a local indian chief (Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear). The story of the guy that was asked to do, Korczak Ziolkowski, it is very interesting. In the visitors centre there are two cinemas show a ten minute video of the history of the place. Korczak was an orphan who worked on Mount Rushmore. He started work on the crazy horse monument, on his own, then got married and had 10 kids, 7 of
which still work on it full time. It will be 465 feet tall when it's finished. The visitor centre is fantastic and far more interesting than the one at Rushmore. We spent an hour but could have easily spent at least 4 there.
This monument and its ethos I now have great respect for. This is because although it is a tourist attraction that is not its sole purpose. The vision is for a university style campus with its entire raison d'etre is to further the teachings and research in to the native indian way of life. Which in my opinion is a much better thing to do than build a casino, which is normally what happens on indian reservations.
We had to leave due to time constraints, it was 6pm by this point. We came back through a place called Hill City. They had shut the high street to cars so that it was bikes only. Now I need to point out that the place was packed and this is 70 odd miles from the main Sturgis site!!!!
As I mentioned earlier it was a hot and cloudless day so we were in t shirt and jeans. We decided
Crazy Horse Monument
The sculpture. 300 times smaller than the finished article to take a nice scenic route to Deadwood then back to the site for some liquid refreshment. As we got closer to Deadwood we could see some fantastic fork lightening lighting up the sky and huge nasty looking black clouds behind it. We pulled over in a layby about 10 miles out to put waterproofs and helmets on, just as we got the first few fat drops of rain. As the storm was moving quite fast in another direction we thought we could wait it out and miss it completely. It looked like it was passing and we were catching the edge of the winds. Although we had to turn with our backs to it to stop the dust getting in our eyes and we were almost getting blown over!!!
Wolf asked if Scott and I were happy to ride in the conditions and we agreed as long as we weren't going too fast. So we climbed aboard the bikes and started them and the heavens opened in the most biblical sense. It came down with a ferocity I have never experienced in my life before. I couldn't see more than 5 feet in front if me and my god
Crazy Horse Monument
A popular biker stop it was painful...
I rode across the road completely blind, to go and hide in a bar and grill. Then as I got off the bike I realized that the little video camera I have was still attached to the handlebars. As I ran in to the bar I nearly knocked Scott over as he had been across the road removing electronic equipment from his tank bag. The bar and grill was tiny and packed but the atmosphere was very genial. The owner did a roaring trade in great cheeseburgers for an hour and a half. We left in a slight drizzle and rode back to the site.
When we got to the site I saw some poor bloke on a full dresser harley come off in the mud. Sorry mate but there was no way I was going to stop.
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