28 June ‘06
The drive from Moorcroft (just outside of Devil’s Tower) to South Dakota and the Black Hills took us about an hour. Louise thought it might be a good route to go though Deadwood and then on to Keystone were we hoped to find a campground for the next week. The other route would have continued on I-90 through Sturgis, to Rapid City and then onto Keystone. Well, our new route turned out to be directly through the Black Hills…Hills, Hell these are mountains… It was a great trip, but it did take a load of gas to get through the ups and downs of these hills. Now we’re in Keystone and we’ve got to find a campground. Finding a campground that will take us through the 5th of July turned out to be tough. We thought it might be fun to enjoy the 4th of July celebration at Mount Rushmore, but unfortunately so did just about everybody else within 300 miles as well. Finally on our 4th or 5th try, we found a site that would take us with a stipulation. We would have to move 3 times in 7 days…
We had no longer set-up the coach for our stay and we were off to see the mountain carving in progress of “Crazy Horse”… This memorial to Crazy Horse in the Black Hills of South Dakota is really something special. The huge visitor complex lay at the base of this mountain were Crazy Horse is being carved. All this started with the first blast of hard rock on June 3rd of 1948. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was asked by the Lakota Indians to come to the Black Hills and carve this memorial. We had the opportunity to see and hear the wonderful story of Korczak and his family of 10 kids who all grew up on this mountain and helped with almost every aspect of carving Crazy Horse. In 1982, Korczak died, but his wife and 7 of his kids (now grown to adults) have continued to work the dream of the Lakotas and Korczak. The work is progressing daily. Even as we stood there looking at the mountain and the head of Crazy Horse completed, we saw 2 blasting that was designed to take out “tons” of rock needed to complete the project. 20, 30, 40 more years…that is the goal for completion
The drive from Moorcroft (just outside of Devil’s Tower) to South Dakota and the Black Hills took us about an hour. Louise thought it might be a good route to go though Deadwood and then on to Keystone were we hoped to find a campground for the next week. The other route would have continued on I-90 through Sturgis, to Rapid City and then onto Keystone. Well, our new route turned out to be directly through the Black Hills…Hills, Hell these are mountains… It was a great trip, but it did take a load of gas to get through the ups and downs of these hills. Now we’re in Keystone and we’ve got to find a campground. Finding a campground that will take us through the 5th of July turned out to be tough. We thought it might be fun to enjoy the 4th of July celebration at Mount Rushmore, but unfortunately so did just about everybody else within 300 miles as well. Finally on our 4th or 5th try, we found a site that would take us with a stipulation. We would have to move 3 times in 7 days…
We had no longer set-up the coach for our stay and we were off to see the mountain carving in progress of “Crazy Horse”… This memorial to Crazy Horse in the Black Hills of South Dakota is really something special. The huge visitor complex lay at the base of this mountain were Crazy Horse is being carved. All this started with the first blast of hard rock on June 3rd of 1948. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was asked by the Lakota Indians to come to the Black Hills and carve this memorial. We had the opportunity to see and hear the wonderful story of Korczak and his family of 10 kids who all grew up on this mountain and helped with almost every aspect of carving Crazy Horse. In 1982, Korczak died, but his wife and 7 of his kids (now grown to adults) have continued to work the dream of the Lakotas and Korczak. The work is progressing daily. Even as we stood there looking at the mountain and the head of Crazy Horse completed, we saw 2 blasting that was designed to take out “tons” of rock needed to complete the project. 20, 30, 40 more years…that is the goal for completion