Mount Rushmore & Crazy Horse

Good morning all.........

We're in Custer, SD now.......lots to see and do here. The weather is hot, hot, HOT...... we were 105 degrees yesterday. Man oh man!

The topgraphy has certainly changed. There are big mountains now.....with trees! We haven't seen those in a while. The country side is beautiful......very hilly with lots of Spruce. All of this area is called the Black Hills. There are lots of rodeos going on in different towns. And festivals......everywhere. People are celebrating summer, that's for sure.

Mount Rushmore was our first stop yesterday. While we've been there before, the awe factor comes right back, when you see the mountain debri below the carvings. It's just unbelievable that it could ever have been done. They have a beautiful monument there,
with and auditorium and movie telling the story. Absolutely amazing.

Then........about 17 miles away is Crazy Horse. The bottom picture here is a plaster replica of how it will look when it's done. As you can see from the mountain, it has a long way to go. The original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, passed away in 1982. He knew at the outset that Crazy Horse was much larger then one person's lifetime; so he and his wife Ruth, prepared three books of detailed plans to be used with his scale models to continue the project. That work is carried on to this day, by his wife and seven of his 10 children. You can see the blasting and moving of rock on a daily basis. Crazy Horse is not a federal or state project. It is a nonprofit, educational and cultural project financed primarily from an admission fee, which for 2008 is $10/adult.

Korczak was originally invited to the Black Hills to carve Crazy Horse by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. The Chief wanted the white man to know that the red man has
great heroes too. He learned of the sculptor when Korczak's PADERWSKI: Study of an immortal won first prize, by popular vote, at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Korczak arrived in the Black Hills on May 3, 1947. Wehn he started work on the mountain in 1949, he was almost 40 and had only $174 left to his name. Over the decades he battled financial hardship, racial prejudice,injuries and advancing age.

There's really a lot of fascination history in this area. Today, and for the next couple of days, we'll be in Custer State Park.......home of the largest bison herd in the US. We plan to bike, and hike, and take pictures. We'll see you on the road.

Love.........Kathie