Days 74-76 Monday, May 14 to Wednesday, May 16
Monday, May 14 – Ellsworth AFB, SD
Today we did much of nothing except relax and did a little maintenance on the RV. I went over to the auto hobby shop on base and changed the oil in the RV, it was due. It was really windy and really cool to cold today, so, much of the day we spent inside. Later in the day I took the Honda down to the dealer in Rapid City to have the 50K service done on it as well. Our friends and traveling partners, Andy and Emily, went on down to see Mt Rushmore.
Tuesday, May 15 – Sight seeing to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse
Today we drove the 34 miles south to see the Mt Rushmore National Memorial. It we really quite impressive indeed.
Here’s the entrance and the “hall of flags” leading to the memorial.
While walking the path through the memorial we ran in to the German couple that we had seen in Yellowstone when we stopped beside the road to see the animals. What a small world for us to have run into this couple again a couple states away and a week or so later!!
After visiting Mt Rushmore we drove about 14 miles further south to see the Crazy Horse Memorial.
Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear officially started Crazy Horse Memorial June 3, 1948. The Memorial's mission is to honor the culture, tradition and living heritage of North American Indians. When completed, this will be the largest mountain sculpture in the world. Because of several factors, such as the uncertainty of the weather, the availability of financing and the challenges of the mountain engineering, there is no way to predict a completion date for the mountain carving. When Korczak died on October 20, 1982, his parting words to his wife were, "You must work on the mountain -- but go slowly so you do it right." Crazy Horse Memorial is a project that will never end, even after the mountain carving is complete. The Ziolkowski family and the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation are dedicated to making careful and steady progress on all of the Memorial's humanitarian goals as well as on the mountain carving. His wife and 7 of his children and their families continue to work on the sculpture today.
I hope you can see from this picture the magnitude of this work in process. It is already taller than the Washington Monument. When completed the Crazy Horse mountain carving will be 641 feet long by 563 feet high. Crazy Horse's completed head is 87 feet 6 inches high. The horse's head, currently the focus of work on the mountain, is 219 feet or 22 stories high.
The photo on the left shows a model of what the carving will look like when completed. Korczak depicted Crazy Horse with his left hand pointing in answer to the derisive question asked by a white man, "Where are your lands now?" Crazy Horse replied, "My lands are where my dead lie buried. "
The official web site can be visited at:
The Web Cam is at:
http://www.crazyhorse.org/webcam.shtml
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Today we rested and re-stocked the RV for our trip south.
posted by Richard @ 9:51 PM
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