Wednesday morning the wind died
down and the clouds moved in. We’ll take
it. When Mike tells me what the weather
is going to be, I shower and get ready.
Wednesday morning, when I was done “foo-fooing” I came out to the
tune of the country song - “Waitin’ on a Woman.” Can you believe Mike actually bought that
song on iTunes and downloaded it to his phone just to make this point? I am not going to type the words out because
I don’t want anyone singing along to this song!
As I mentioned before, we always
told people two destinations when talking about our adventure – Yellowstone and
Mount Rushmore. Wednesday we fulfilled
our dream.
We had about an hour drive to this
national treasure. Mount Rushmore
started as an idea by a South Dakota historian in 1923 to carve giant statues
in the Black Hills to draw tourists. He
envisioned a parade of explorers and Indians interspersed in a section called
The Needles. Not everyone agreed with
this. A local conservationist said, “Man
makes statues, but God made the Needles.”
I love it!
The sculptor chosen for the
project was Gutzon Borglum, an American born in Idaho to Danish
immigrants. He had gained some fame from
his earlier works, most importantly, his carving on Stone Mountain in Georgia. He felt the Needles were too fragile and
instead chose 5,725-foot Mount Rushmore.
Borglum was extremely patriotic and wanted this to be much more than a
tourist attraction. His stated vision
was “ the formal rendering of the philosophy of our government into granite on
a mountain peak in commemoration of the foundation, preservation, and
continental expansion of the United States.”
His choices to embody this vision:
George Washington (foundation),
Thomas Jefferson (foundation and expansion), Theodore Roosevelt (preservation
and expansion) and Abraham Lincoln (preservation).
Work started on the mountain in
1927 and continued for 14 years. 90% of
the rock was removed by dynamite blasting.
Over 400 workers brought Borglum’s vision to life. They hung over the mountain on bosun
chairs. George Washington dominates the
faces. His head alone is 6 stories tall. A Presidential Trail loops around the
base. Along the way, each face is
explained with an information board containing facts of that president; birth,
death, years of presidency, highlights of presidency and famous quotes. Theodore Roosevelt’s head is tucked in behind
Jefferson’s and this trail gives the best view of his face. Mike keenly spotted rocks that had deep furrows in them and said they were probably what was chiseled away. The trail also leads to the sculptor’s studio
where models, tools and artifacts are displayed. And he was right, because in the outside the studio were samples of the rocks that had been removed, all with the same lines. The Faces (as they are referred to here) were
completed in 1941. Gutzon Borglum died
that same year, and his son Lincoln did the final finishing work.
Every evening, beginning at 9pm
there is a lighting ceremony. We got
here before noon, so sticking around till then wasn’t really an option but we
heard it is really cool. While we were
there, the sun broke through the clouds for a few minutes and bathed just
George Washington in light. The info
guide suggests the best time to view and photograph the monument is in morning
light.
Once again, my feeble mind cannot comprehend the ingenuity and skill it took to create this impressive work.
Mt. Rushmore is one of those
places that, as we were walking away, kept looking back to get one more
glimpse. We played the “what if”
game. Remember, the carving of this
monument began in 1927. What if a
project like this were started today?
What 4 presidents would be included?
We decided that possibly Franklin Roosevelt would replace Theodore, but
the other 3 are shoo-ins. It’s hard to
pick just 4, isn’t it?
On a side note, the Irish pub in
Rapid City where we stopped to eat on Tuesday had a TV on. It was tuned to a sports channel,
naturally. The show airing was doing a
series called “Faces of the Franchise.”
They would pick a professional team in a sport and choose 4 players or
coaches from that team that would be on their “Mt. Rushmore”. They even put their heads on the real
mountain. I found it amazing that we
were watching this, in the land of The Faces!
And go ahead, see how difficult it is to choose just 4 people over a
long time span. Take the Green Bay
Packers, for example. (I use them because, even though they are from the
smallest market in the NFL, they are arguably the best known outside of the
Dallas Cowboys). My three no-brainers
for the faces are Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr and Brett Favre. There are way too many great Packers to
choose from for that fourth spot. Or how
about the Yankees – how could you ever just pick 4 from their rosters over the
years. Impossible. I can’t even decide on 4 for our beloved
Detroit Lions but for sure Bobby Layne, Alex Karras, and Barry Sanders would
get my vote. It’s a little too early to
put Calvin Johnson up there. See, this
can get addicting!
(that was probably totally boring
for the non-sports fans. . . sorry!)
Next for us on Wednesday was the
Crazy Horse Memorial. In his invitation
to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to carve this, Chief Henry Standing Bear said,
“My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great
heroes, too.” Work started in June,
1948.
Crazy Horse is from the Oglala
Lakota tribe. He never signed a treaty and never surrendered. He was about 35 years old when, in 1877, standing
under a flag of truce, he was stabbed in the back by a soldier. Ziolkowski wrote this about his subject in
1949: “Crazy Horse defended his people and their way of life in the only manner
he knew. But he did this only after he
saw the Treaty of 1868 broken. This
treaty, signed by the President of the United States, said, in effect: As long as rivers run and grass grows and
trees bear leaves, the Black Hills of Dakota will forever be the sacred land of
the Sioux Indians. (the gold rush from 1874-77 in the Black Hills pretty much voided this treaty). And only after the failure of the government
to provide the required guarantees such as meat, clothing and necessities for
existence, which they were to have received for having given up their lands and
gone to live on reservations. And only
after he saw his people’s lives and their way of life ravaged and destroyed. .
. “
This memorial is a work in
progress. Only the head is
complete. Korczak’s wife and seven of
their nine children continue working on it.
They accept no federal monies.
The family strongly believes in the free enterprise system and that
Crazy Horse should be built by the interested public and not the taxpayer. (what a refreshing concept. But one would think if the revenue the
Indians get from their gaming properties around the country were donated to
this, the memorial would be near completion.)
The project is funded by the entrance fee ($11 per adult) and sales from
the gift shop and café on-site. An
excellent Indian Museum of North America is completed, along with a Cultural
Center and an outdoor viewing area.
Access to his sculptor’s studio/home/workshop is also included, so you
are not just paying $11 to see the memorial.
You can see that driving up to the entrance. I was standing next to an elderly lady
reading one of the info boards in the visitor center and she said to her
husband, “I would like to come back when it is finished.” He replied, “Honey, this will
never be done in our lifetime.” Mike and
I think we can say the same thing.
For an extra $4 per person, we
could have taken a bus to the foot of the mountain for a closer look, but we
chose not to. At one time, you could get
right up on to the sculpture. We saw pictures
of people posing right under Crazy Horse’s nose!
The Memorial is massive in
size. It will be taller than the Washington Monument, and will be the world’s largest
mountain carving. It will dwarf Mt. Rushmore.
In the orientation film, they superimposed the Faces of Rushmore onto
Crazy Horse and they are the size of Crazy Horse’s head!
On another great tip from Chuck,
we traveled on Needles Highway to Custer State Park and Iron Mountain Road out
of it. Custer State Park was on our list
to do today so this just gave us a route to follow. The Needles are a gem! I don’t know why this stretch of road isn’t
more highly touted. It was more of the
switchback roads we've become accustomed to and we had to pull over several times just so Mike could see
the scenery because he sure couldn’t take his eyes off the road! We did see more buffalo and deer in Custer
State Park, but didn’t see any burros that the region is famous for. I saw postcards and brochures with pictures
of the burros coming right up to cars.
Maybe they are old pictures, like the bears in Yellowstone.
The Iron Mountain road gave me
another term since I have used the terms “twisty and curvy” to death –
pigtail. This road resembled the
corkscrew of a pig’s tail. The bridges
on it are called pigtail bridges. But
the road afforded us some terrific, long-range views of Mt. Rushmore, both from
the car and from viewpoints we stopped at.
Four couples, all on motorcycles, from Oklahoma were glad we came along,
as they were perched on a rock, waiting for someone to take a group picture!
Our day ended in Keystone, the
town right before Mt. Rushmore. It is
keeping the western way alive with wooden plank sidewalks (actually, composite
decking material made to resemble wooden planks!) We were hungry and thirsty, so the Red Garter
Saloon beckoned. When I realized they
had free Wi-Fi, I ran back to the car and got my laptop. I had been working all day on the previous
post, but couldn’t send it with the spotty coverage while in the
mountains. We missed the Wild Bill
Hickok shoot-out in Deadwood, but, unbeknownst to us, the Red Garter did a
little skit of another gunfight Wild Bill was involved in in Abilene, Kansas. As with the shoot-out at the Irma Hotel in
Cody, this was entertaining and corny.
They even held up a sign when we were supposed to groan! One of the actors was 7’2” and had a beard
that would make him fit right in with the Duck Dynasty group!
So today is Thursday and we are
moving on. Our campground outside
Sturgis was a perfect location for everything we did the past few days. We are headed to the Corn Palace in Mitchell,
SD. We just crossed over into the
Central Time Zone, so now are only one hour behind Michigan time. We could see the Badlands off in the distance
as we travel I-90 east. We left at 8 am
local time and have been on the road for 5 hours. Mitchell is not far
ahead. I have been typing on and off for
those 5 hours (in between a fuel stop, rest area stops, and looking things up
on the Internet when Mike has a question).
Mike says I need to learn how to do the Cliff Notes version!
Read this - especially the top quote.
You know who - trying to add her mug to The Faces!
Mt. Rushmore from 3 miles away on Iron Mountain Road.
At the Red Garter Saloon
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