OK, so we awoke to snow on the ground in Gillette and very icy road conditions. Luckily, we do not have a great distance to drive today but we are on some smaller roads as we are heading to some rather well-known tourist/historic sites today.
First order of the day is to show the route that we will take which is through Wyoming and then cross the state border into South Dakota. Initially, the drive was through the very flat terrain of Wyoming and once into South Dakata we entered an area called the Black Hills. People have commented to us that it is a very unique region.
Unique is one way to describe it, but we were both very much taken with it. It formed as a result of an upwarping of ancient rock, after which the removal of the higher portions of the mountain mass by stream erosion produced the present-day topography. The hills are so called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they are covered in evergreen trees. American Indian tribes have a long history in the Black Hills and consider it a sacred site.
As you can imagine the topography called for some very tight road conditions but luckily the roads were clear of ice by the time we got on them. It isn’t a huge area, but the beauty makes up for it.
First port of call was at the Crazy Horse Memorial. We will give you a quick synopsis of what it is about and how it came about. Firstly, it is a private enterprise with no government funding and continues to be that way and will be like that until completion. It is a carving into the granite rock of colossal proportion and the photo is of what the finished product should look like. The monument was commenced in 1948.
It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing to his tribal land. Crazy Horse fought at Custers Last Stand so was known for his bravery. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski
He was a Polish sculptor who also worked on Mt Rushmore which was (sort of) finished in 1941 due to WWI but was never truly finished. After the war, Korczak then dedicated his life’s work to the Crazy Horse Memorial. Take note of the hole in the rock you can see as below we hope to give you some idea as to how we can quantify it.
On special occasions, you can go right up to the face but today is as close as we could get. Fraser had been here back in 2004 when he was working a lot in Gillette and in that time, he has noticed a significant change. What has caused the work to be speeded up is the technology of the tools that they now use.
They don’t give you a time of completion due to the fact that it is all done through private funding and when working on something this size, who knows what problems you are going to face.
The sculpture’s final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet (195 m) long and 563 feet (172 m) high. The outstretched left arm will be 263 feet (80 m) long, the opening under arm 70 feet (21 m) wide and 100 feet (30 m) high, and the extended index finger 29 feet 6 inches (9 m) long. The face of Crazy Horse, completed in 1998, is 87 feet 6 inches (26.7 m) high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet (18 m) high.
One of the stats we heard today will help you put into perspective the difference of the size of this project against Mt Rushmore which is only half an hour up the road. The volume of rock pulled out of the whole is equivalent to the entire amount of rock that was removed in the creation of Mt Rushmore.
This kind of thing just blows us away. We will never be able to ever get our heads around this. You know, we were driving to Mt Rushmore when we had this guy driving his red pickup in the fast lane very slowly with everyone passing him on the inside. You would think someone would indicate to him to move over but you don’t because you don’t know if the crazy is going to pull a gun out on you. There is just an edge here that you don’t feel in Canada – not to say it wouldn’t happen, but the likelihood isn’t as great.
So, this is the avenue of flags which has the flags of each state represented as you approach the monument. It was blowing a hoolie like you wouldn’t believe and the wind chill factor had the nasal orifices objecting intensely. A lot of people are intensely disappointed in the size of the sculpture, but you really need to appreciate it for what it is. A very interesting fact is that 90% of the carving was done by explosives – these guys must have been very good at their jobs.
The rock here is slightly different from what is at Crazy Horse and more friable which is why they could use blasting as much as they did. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, named it the Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln chosen to represent the nation’s birth, growth, development, and preservation. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually.
Apparently, Donald J Trump is going to commission a 5th head of himself to be carved alongside the others. He is about to pardon 500 undocumented Mexican stonemasons so it can proceed. True story – we saw it on Fox news……………
Anyway, after that bit of lightheartedness (well we hope it is) we then drove onto Rapid City for the night. We have bunked up in a brand-new Best Western which is really lovely. Our plan was to drive to Sioux Falls tomorrow and then on Thursday drive through to Rochester Minesota but there appears to be some big sports gathering in Sioux Falls and accommodation is hard to come by and dynamic pricing has kicked in. Hence, we have decided to drive straight through to Rochester to our friends Ilka and Dennis instead. It will be a trek of 570 miles (917k)….OMG!!! So please do not expect a blog tomorrow. Anyway, it would be as boring as batshit anyway!!
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