Day 8 (5/11/24): Black Hills

Our first day in the Black Hills area took us to Mount Rushmore.  It really is an awesome site to experience.  Tenacity, vision...frankly the balls to take on such a feat is unbelievable!  If you have a chance to come see this it is really something else!

Luke did not get to go, so we pulled over at the profile scenic viewpoint later and he & dad got to take profile pics with G. Washington!

Next Stop Crazy Horse Memorial.  I did not know anything about this before coming, and it was not in existence when Barry's parents took them here in the 70's.  Click on the link and learn more, since I will probably not be able to do it justice.  

In a nutshell, it is a privately funded memorial that continues to be constructed, and probably still will be for many, many years to come.  The vision began when Chief Henry Standing Bear asked Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to come to the Black Hills to carve the likeness of Crazy Horse into the Black Hills as the centerpiece of a future campus, per se, housing a Museum, Education Center, and University dedicated to the Native Americans whose land this once belonged to.  Ziolkowski and his family dedicated their lives to this work.  Yes, his descendants are still involved!  In this photo you can see what it looks like today, and in the next photo you can see what the final vision is to be.

FYI, we are standing VERY far away from the sculpture...it's huge!

We took a drive down to Jewel Cave National Park.  We decided not to take the tour of either of the two caves in the area (Wind Cave National Park is the other one), since we have done two other cave tours within the last 6 months: Kartchner Caverns over our Thanksgiving road trip to California, and Longhorn Cavern near Austin with friends, the Bankson's, who by the way were the ones who pushed me over the edge to start this blog :).  I hope we did not miss anything spectacular by skipping these tours...

We also stopped at Custer State Park Visitor Center to watch the film before we visit tomorrow.  FYI, my kids will attest to the fact that I must watch every film at every Visitor Center!  On one of our road trips to Yellowstone I made them watch so many Visitor Center films, they were in protest by the end of our trip!

We had dinner at Murphy's Pub & Grill on the dog friendly patio.  The weather has been amazing - we feel so lucky & blessed.  Just last week there was a snow storm, the remains of which we could still see on the ground in some areas.  Today's high was 70 :)

Jacob has challenged my brain to create maps showing where we have been - I am too tired to try to do it tonight (it requires me to re-learn how to do this in Google Maps!)...maybe on another post  :)

GOOD NIGHT!

Miles driven: 132