Crazy and More Rush

Friday 31^st May –last night we stayed in Rapid City, South Dakota, a pleasant town with a definite main street. Despite the wind, we looked around for a while before choosing an interesting restaurant with Californian-European cuisine.

 Before our 9 am start today we managed to get a cheap and tasty breakfast in a café one block away (hotel restaurant rather on the elaborate side).  We left our central location and drove south into the Black Hills. These are named for their dark green, coniferous forest and rugged terrain of granites and metamorphic rocks, reminiscent of parts of Scotland. The area has a rich history of Indian settlement, and mining (Gold Rush) and is now a popular tourist location.

Two impressive attractions awaited us. First, we went to Crazy Horse, the world’s largest rock sculpture and national memorial to the Native American peoples.  This was designed in 1947 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski who worked on it until his death in 1982. The statue will be about 250 feet high when finished and has involved the removal of millions of tons of pink granite, a truly awe-inspiring achievement.  Work continues by a non-profit foundation run by his widow and 7 of his 10 children. The sculpture depicts Sioux Indian Crazy Horse, who was stabbed at Fort Robinson in 1877 by an American soldier while under a flag of truce. There is a large visitor centre, Native Indian museum and collection of work by Ziolkowski. See www.crazyhorsememorial.org.

 Pushed for a time and having barely done the place justice, we continued to Mount Rushmore in the same area. This is another rock sculpture, of the heads of former presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, again in granite, but on a completely different scale – the heads being 10s of feet high and completed in a few years before 1941. (Remember the scene in Hitchcock’s film North by North-West?) This was designed by Gutzon Borglum, assisted for a short time by a young Korczak Ziolkowski. This is national monument and has the dignity and structure appropriate to such a construction.

The visit was marred by ferocious winds again, and as we left the site, rain began to fall. We returned to Rapid City and here some of the party continued on the optional visit to the Badlands National Park, about 90 miles to the south-east. Briefly we debated if it was worth pressing on with the trip in driving rain and poor visibility, but some time later our persistence was rewarding by yet a third incredible sight in the same day. The Badlands are a receding front of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires of multi-coloured sandstones and siltstones, marking the boundary between the high and low prairies.

 Despite the bad weather, there was plenty to marvel at, as we called at the visitor centre and took the 30-mile scenic drive. It was 7 pm before we returned to Rapid City after a remarkable day, certainly a highlight of our tour. Another early start tomorrow and back into Wyoming.