The wind was so bad last night we had to put the slides in
around 1:00 am. Besides worrying about the awnings over the slides
ripping in the wind, the awful noise made by their flapping would have stopped
us going back to sleep. It’s supposed to be really windy again in a few
days and we hope we don’t have to go through that again. It’s a problem
with Gwen because she can get under the bed and prevent us from putting the
slide back out. Goblin couldn’t care less. He’s too lazy to even
get into a cardboard box (very unusual for a cat).
Finally we have good news to report on the truck. PPEI
adjusted the tuning and emailed the files which I still can’t download into
their software program. We went back to the wonderful diesel genius
we met yesterday and he did it for us in about two minutes. The truck is
now running the way it should, not smoking and with even better power. We
won’t know how it performs under the stress of towing the fifth wheel until we
leave here next Tuesday, but at least it’s running perfectly without the
trailer.
Today’s first stop was at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the
Black Hills. The sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was born in Boston of Polish
immigrant parents. He was being interviewed in the film we watched and it
was so odd to hear this Boston accent coming out of a grizzled old mountain man.
He had worked on Mount Rushmore for a year as the assistant of Gutzon Borglum
which is how he came to be involved in the Crazy Horse project. Chief
Henry Standing Bear, representing a number of Indian chiefs, asked Korczak if
he would be interested in carving a mountain as a memorial to show that Indians
as well as whites had great men. He said he didn’t have anywhere else to
be so he would make it his life’s work. He started it in 1947 and died in
1982 before the face was even close to finished. He and his wife had ten
children, nearly all of whom work on the mountain or in the businesses the
family started to support the work (restaurant, museum, sculptor’s studio, gift
shop). Korczak had very strong beliefs about not using government support
for projects and refused to accept any public money. The entire thing has
been financed by entry fees, donations and what the businesses make.
That’s no doubt why it’s taking so long. They can’t hire hundreds of
workers like Mount Rushmore did. This is really a family project.
Taken from the parking lot which is about a mile away.
The tunnel under his arm has taken a very long time to open. This
monument is so big the entire Mount Rushmore carving would fit between the
finished part of the face and the area where the cutting stops to its left.
Close-up of the face from the only angle available to
viewers unless you take the bus ride up to the base. They also take
people up to the top by bus but during the week these tours don’t start until
4:30 pm after work has stopped for the day.
Working at the end of his hand. We could see all the
dust they were throwing with their drilling. The equipment is moved up
the back side where roads are cut.
This 2014 photo shows the progress as of two years
ago. The scale model at bottom left shows how the mountain will look when
it’s finished. We hope Korczak has enough grandchildren and
great-grandchildren interested in this work to finish it.
In front of the 1/300th scale model.
It’s too bad no one alive today will see the finished
carving (judging by the 69 years it’s taken to get to this point).
Reminds me of the construction of the great cathedrals of Europe in the middle
ages which took as many as 200 years for completion.
After an excellent lunch of tatanka stew (our first taste of
buffalo), we headed for Custer State Park. It was named, of course, for
General George Armstrong Custer who led an expedition to the area which he then
explored and mapped. He also announced the discovery of gold on French
Creek near today’s Custer, SD (not far from the park), triggering the Black
Hills gold rush which lasted for only two years.
The park is very large…..71,000 acres…..the biggest state
park in SD and one of the biggest in the country. It has gorgeous scenery
ranging from grasslands to granite mountaintop outcrops. We took the
Wildlife Loop Road and found a small herd of buffalo with lots of calves.
Later on there was a huge bull by himself much closer to the road. We
felt very fortunate to have seen these buffalo after being told by a D.O.T.
worker that the big herd has been spending its time over by Wind Cave National
Park which is to the south of Custer. They aren’t confined but are free
to roam wherever they can find grazing. There were no buffalo here at all
when the park opened, so 36 animals were purchased to start a herd which then
grew to 2,500 which was too much for the available food. Now the grazing
situation is assessed each year and the herd is thinned to the number that can
be supported. They hold a round-up each September where the season’s
calves are branded and an auction is held to sell the excess animals.
We hoped to do several of the scenic drives but had the
misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any other day
this week and this wouldn’t have happened. They were repaving an
intersection we had to go through so we (and many others) had to wait for over
an hour for the asphalt to dry enough to drive on. It’s sort of like
watching paint dry. But we did have really beautiful weather and a lovely
spot to be in while we waited so all it ended up doing was making us get back
later than we wanted for Lovie’s sake. She was none the worse for wear.
On our route out of the park we stopped at an
overlook. I took this picture which isn’t good because the light was
really wrong. Neither of us realized what we were looking at until I
looked at the picture later. It’s Mount Rushmore…..you can just barely
make out the faces. The carving is so impressive and looks so huge when
you’re right under it, but from this distance (several miles away) it has a
totally different look.
Our drive out of the park was along a road with numerous
hairpin turns and several tunnels cut through the rock. Very slow-going
with gorgeous scenery Jim couldn’t see because he had to pay such close
attention to the road. There are a couple of these windy routes and I’d
wanted to take the other one that went by the Needles, but learned at the last
minute that one of the tunnels is only 8’4” wide with no by-pass. Our
truck is 8’ wide. Jim said he’d do it, I said I wouldn’t, and since I was
navigating we didn’t. The route we ended up on was quite enough.
Lots more to see. Will decide in the morning what
we’ll do tomorrow.
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