Land Cruising in Little Drifter: South Dakota - Mt. Rushmore

Sunday, August 23, 2020

We finally made it to South Dakota and the Heartland RV Park and Cabins.

The haze in the photo below is from the fires in Colorado and California.

Please, keep all of those affected in your prayers.

Our first sunset in South Dakota

As most of you know, the primary purpose of this entire leg of our trip is Mount Rushmore. We headed out to see it first thing Monday morning and to check out a few other things. We were not five minutes from our park when I saw Mount Rushmore in the distance. It was just a quick glimpse, Dennis did not even get to see it it was so quick. On the way to the memorial we had intended to stop at the Rush Mountain Adventure Park and go through the Rushmore Caves. Well they are closed on Mondays. So we continued on to Gotzon Borglum Museum (the sculptor of Rushmore) and, well, it was closed on Mondays.

Finally we made it to Mount Rushmore. The original idea began in 1923 and was originallly to carve old west heroes in the needles area of the Black Hills, which is a nearby rock formation. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, rejected the needles and chose the final location partially because of the orientation of the morning light and partially because of the fine granite at the current location. The needles had already shown quite a bit of erosion and he didn't want all of his efforts to deteriorate in short time. The scuplter also changed the images to presidents during the planning stages. The work began in 1927. The Washington head was dedicated in 1930 - Jefferson head dedicated in 1936 - Lincoln head in 1937 - Roosevelt head in 1939. The project was completed in 1941.

Below is the Avenue of Flags. The Avenue of Flags was initially established as part of the celebration of the United States' Bicentennial in 1976, at the request of a visitor. The 56 flags represent the 50 states, one district, three territories, and two commonwealths of the United States of America. Placement is alphabetical so it is easy to find whichever flag you are interested in. Each flag has a plaque indicating the year and the sequence number of admittance into the union. Texas joined the union in 1845 - in case you were wondering.

We took the Presidential Trail around the base of the memorial. It was really amazing. At some points you are looking up the noses of these great symbols of our democracy. We saw signs of recent fires along the route, but I never could find any information on a recent fire. So I cannot tell you anything about that.

Next stop was Hill City were we had an incredible German feast at the Alpine Inn. They had the best red cabbage in the world.

Then we went forward to the Crazy Horse Memorial. The image below was part of the museum and I love the way it overlays the drawing of the sculture over a photo of the actual work in progress. We asked when they projected the project would be finalized and were told they measure that in decades, so it is hard to say. The work began in 1948 but the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation had been formed in 1933 and its primary spokesperson was Chief Henry Standing Bear who was a first cousin of Crazy Horse. The scupltor, Korczak Ziolkowski, worked on the project from 1947 until his death in 1982. He never took a salary for his work on this project and was quoted as saying, "By carving Crazy Horse, if I can give back to the Indian some of his pride and create a means to keep alive his culture and heritage, my life will have been worthwhile."

They had live performances of some of their cultural dances. The dancer below is a 13 year old who was taught the ways of his people by his grandparents. The second picture I thought was the perfect example of an adolescent boy who may have had other things he wanted to do today. LOL!

The femal dancer below competes in many Pow Wows around the country and performed three seperate dances for us the day we were there.

The sculpture shown here is a 1/34 scale model of what the completed sculpture will look like on the mountain.

This was a huge complex where they had the home of the scultor and his workshop, a full blown restaurant, a native american museum with a lot of acient artifacts. We spent a lot of time here and really enjoyed the exhibits.

Up ahead was the Custer State Park, or part of it. I had heard of a lake in the park that was supposed to be the most photographed place in South Dakota. Knowing that is where Mount Rushmore is, I wasn't sure if my information was trustworthy, but I had to go see. The lake is called Sylvan Lake and it was an amazing site. I wish the photographs had done it justice. Of course, as has been the case on most of this portion of the trip, the early morning and late afternoon photos seem to come out the best and I am never near one of these beautiful places during those times. We hiked along the trail that goes around this lake. It isn't anywhere near the size of our lakes in Texas, so don't think we are superstars or anything. There is one portion where you go through a rock formation that made me want to go back to The Baths in the BVI!!! Nowhere near that scale, just a nod to the those beautiful rocks. We even ran across a guy rock climbing on the back side of the rocks. It would turn out to not be our first exposure to crazy rock climbers.

We spent a lot of time at each of these locations, so we did not really get to everything we had hoped to do on this day. The Custer State Park was cut short after this lake and we headed back home. The rest of the park will have to wait for another day.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site - We drove out to the Minuteman Missile Site on the way to The Badlands. It is a cold war era nuclear missile silo that was remotely controlled by the local Air Force Base and the Delta 1 Launch Control. We visited the Delta 9 site which is out in a field not far from the highway. During the last half of the 20th century these missile sites were on alert 24-7. There was even an air support above the earth at all times that was capable of launching the nuclear warheads. It was interesting to me that the missile site was in plain view of the highway, but it was top secret and never brought attention to itself. After the cold war Russia and the US agreed to dismantle our missile sites and take our fingers off the launch buttons. The US dismantled ours and sold the property back to the ranchers they bought the land from. With this one exception. In order to preserve history the US disarmed the war head and created this natural historic site so we never forget. We went on to the Delta 1 launch site and, you guesssed it, it was closed. Oh well.

The picture above is of the misile silo. Below are the rails that you can see would slide to open the silo to make way for the blast of the missile and the other photo is a peak into the silo.

Below is the closed launch site and visitors center aka Delta 1.

It is an underground facility and that is why the Covid shut it down for now.

Further on down the road we were heading to see the Badlands. When we were entering the Badlands area there was the Roberts Prairie Dog Town. What a way to make lemonade with lifes lemons. This guy sells bags of peanuts for $.50 and you go into his yard and feed the prairie dogs. Which are everywhere in these here parts and can truly make a mess of your yard. We passed it quickly so I did not get a picture, but looked it up and there are some videos on YouTube and pictures on Trip Advisor. It really made me laugh out loud.

The Badlands is an incredible place. Like nothing I have ever seen before. Forever ago (75 million years ago according to scientists) these here parts were under water, covered by a shallow sea and these rock formations were the at the sea floor. The view is truly other worldly! The layers of colors on these rocks are fascinating. As the water receded Mother Nature painted them with whatever was in the air / water at the time. The dark layer near the bottom of the formations is full of fossils. There are many trails throughout the area. We trekked across a few, but had not allotted enough time to take some of the longer paths. I will give myself more time next time we are here. But what we saw was breathtaking. Once again, they say the photos are best in the early morning or evening, but this is all I got!

These rocks don't look like they could be climbed. They are very crumbly and holey, not like the granite in the Black Hills.

My billy goat

Near the bottom, you can see in the shot below, grey becomes the dominant color.

Again, this is where the fossils can be found.

Further down the road is Wall, South Dakota. Wall Drug Store in this small town is famous for being famous. Dorothy and Ted Hustead and their two children had tried to make their drug store work for five years, beginning in 1931, when they were at their wits end. One afternoon Dorothy told Ted she was gonna got take a nap with the children in the apartment behind the store where they lived. Before long she was back in the front of the store saying she couldn't sleep with all the noise from highway 16A. There was a lot of traffic passing them by. She decided they needed to put out signs advertising free ice water on the highway and that would bring the customers in. So they put signs on Hwy 16 and 14 and before they were finished putting up the signs people were already filling the store. The drugstore now covers two full blocks in Wall, South Dakota and houses many different stores along with a restaurant that seats 530 people and the 'Back Yard' with a train station, panning for gold and even a roaring T-Rex. It is impressive how they made this all happen by giving away free ice water during a hot summer in Wall, South Dakota.

Wednesday, August 26

We have really had a busy couple of days, and we are not stopping now. Today we take off to see the famous city of Sturgis. The famous motorcycle rally, the largest in the world, just ended on August 13, 2020, so we will see what they left behind. I wanted to be sure to see the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum which did not disappoint. They had a great collection. Many of the older models really just looked like the electric bikes you see around these days. My brother and I had just been discussing how the exhaust pipes on our old bikes used to leave us with scars on our calves. We saw many of those here. They even had some carved out of wood, a famous million mile bike, and some really unusual custom bikes.

Really - come on! You gotta be 10 foot tall to ride this thing.

This bike is in the Guinness Book of World Records!

David Barr road this bike 15,090 miles in a little less than 4 months.

And then check out this one. First the info, but the belt on this guy.

Next we drove through Aladdin, Wyoming and found this 130 year old General Store. Note that the population here in Aladdin is 15. LOL. It had original shelves and cabinets with some of their old wares on them as well. They have added a bar and newly remodeled restrooms for the motorcycle people traveling through here to go to and from Sturgis.

Now we are off to see the Devils Tower. Another strange rock formation. This tower can be found in, wait for it, Devils Tower, Wyoming. So they named the town after it. This strange tower was formed from molten magma forced into sedimentary rocks above and cooled underground some 50 million years ago. Over millions of years the rock has eroded to expose Devils Tower. The tower rises 867 feet from its base and stands 1,267 feet above the river below. This is a favorite spot for rock climbers. Some 5,000 climbers come every year from all over the world. Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed this rock to be the very first national manument in 1906. We spotted two and heard there were additional climbers while we were there. We followed the path around the tower to see this amazing rock. It was pretty incredible to see in person.

This rock is also famous for its role in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I really need to watch that again so I can see this movie star in action.

This is a sacred place for many Indian Tribes and you can see pieces of cloth and wrapped up bundles attached to trees along the path around the tower. These are prayer cloths and bundles placed there by those tribal people during sacred ceremonies.

The prayer cloths

These are the two climbers we were able to spot.

I cannot imagine how long it takes someone to climb to the top and back down.

We continued down the road back toward South Dakota and Spearfish Canyon where they have three beautiful waterfalls. The first waterfall looked like it was moving in slow motion. It was pretty, but I've seen better.

Continuing on, we realize we are pretty hungry and saw that it was 4:30 and we had not eaten since early this morning. The next fall is directly beneath a pretty nice restaurant, Latchstring Restaurant, so we decided to grab a bite before finishing our trek up the canyon. You could look over and see the top of this second waterfall. The water was actually coming from two seperate places around the Lodge across the street. Then there is the hike down to the bottom of the falls. It is a treat all by itself as we have found so many things here are. We saw a deer hunkered down along the trail the beautiful streams coming up on the falls and just pretty lush undergrowth everywhere. Other forrests we had been in had little or no undergrowth. We decided it was the water that makes this place so tropical instead of barren.

Our view from the Latchstring Restaurant patio

Beautiful stream along the trail to the falls

Finally this beautul waterfall.

The amazing trail and our eight point buck in the brush.

Since it was getting late we decided not to walk the rest of the trail to the next waterfall. It was only a mile one way, but we would also have to get back to our car and didn't want to be out ther with the mountain lions after dark. This last fall and stream was amazing. They have several little almost hidden areas with picnic tables and bridges over the stream and then finally the beautiful falls. It was spectacular.

After a full day we decided to stop off in Deadwood before we made it back to Hermosa and the RV park. I really did not know what to expect, but gambling was really not on my radar at all. Every establishment has slot machines and some have table gambling. We went into the famous Saloon #10 where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the head while holding what is now known as the "deadman's hand" - Aces and 8s. They had a little re-enactment of some kind going on but we left and went outside where they were having live music in what we found out was the Kool Deadwood Nights. Earlier they had a car show and many of the cars where in the area parking lots there. They had a 50s & 60s band playing and people were dancing. Looked like a real good time, but we had been at this all day. On the way back to the car, we found a brewery - we had to go in there, right? The name was Jacob's Brewhouse and they had a full blown really nice restauraunt, a bakery/grocery next door with some exotic food and beyond that they were making their brewery so they could make their brew right there. As we were talking about some of the art on the walls, the owner came by and mentioned that it was his work. He also had a gallery in Sturgis and we may have seen his work there. How cool is that! The man is extremely talented. If you get near Deadwood, I highly recommend this place. Also, it is a full bar, so you dont just have to drink beer.

As we were leaving the brewery at around 9:00 I saw a flash from a storefront next door. I had to investigate and there was this lone guy glass blowing up some fancy stuff right there.