Day 3: The Sights “We could do monuments today,” suggested J.

We’d already driven by Mt. Rushmore, and saw the full parking lots. Did we really have to go back?

But Crazy Horse…I’d rather see something like Crazy Horse now because someday it will be completed and then I can say I saw it being built.

We packed a lunch and set off early, getting Crazy Horse before the crowds did. We could see it before we got there. It’s HUGE! The head is much larger than Rushmore’s heads and they’d painted an outline of where the horses head would eventually show with white paint.

Impressive is an understatement. The sculptor (Korczak Zilkowski) had spent most of his life working on just the head and died before he could see that completed. The entire enterprise seemed so large, but no one in his family seemed dissuaded. They were going to see this completed, and have turned it into an enterprise.



He arrived in Custer, SD with only $174 in his pocket. A pittance. He had to establish a dairy and a lumbermill to support the blasting and carving. He built his own home, his own studio, his own roads. He climbed 700+ stairs to the top to work on it, and had to often climb down to restart an ancient gas compressor to restart it when it failed. One day he walked down 9 times.

We took the optional bus ride to the base and learned about the beavers that he tried to get rid of by blasting their dam. They rebuilt and ate some of his hoses. After that he left them alone. We saw the deer and marmots still living on the property and saw them sandblasting part of the horses head from on high.

We toured the grounds and did the standard touristy things like buy a chunk of the mountain (only $1!) and an Indian braided bracelet (only $1!).

But by the time we finished, it was only 11:30. I think we are still on Central time. We get up too early and go to bed too early.

J handed the car keys off to me. I got to drive down a mountain highway myself. It wasn’t as twisty and turny as the ones that J’s been driving, but I did okay. I have a tendancy to shift into neutral for some of the slopes around Wisconsin, and that drives J nuts. He was taught to use your standard transmission gears to modulate your speed on down slopes. I tried to do it to appease him, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at it. It’s probably not very good for my car to coast in neutral and brake a lot either.



We found our way to Jewel cave. Most of my pictures from there did not turn out. Jewel Cave is a giant geode basically. 100 miles of caves covered in crystals and they are still discovering more and more. After riding down an elevator for 275 feet, we entered the cave at 49 degrees F and 95% humidity. (Boing! Goes my hair.) The tour guide was careful to caution us not to touch them, and I had to temper my “touch and feel” habit a bit as a consequence. There are dozens of different formations; some spiky like glass fragments, some that look like popcorn, some with jabba the hut like blobs and even some that are hollow on the inside and end in a bulb that will eventually shatter under its own weight. Most of them do not sparkle, as they appear kind of muddy. She told us that, in order to go on the “spelunker’s tour”, one had to fit into a space that is 8 1/2” x 19” . J and I both tried and failed.



And as if that wasn’t enough, the rest of the day was spent out driving and trying to see wildlife. Let’s see how we did.








That’s quite enough for a day.

Labels: black hills, south dakota, vacation

  ¶ 4:47 PM