Mountains & Monuments

It's Tuesday morning and today is the last leg of our trip to Lincoln. We have a long day of driving ahead of us, so we decided we should break it up with a quick trip to Badlands National Park. We'll leave in just a bit.

We spent the night in Keystone, South Dakota after visiting Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore. Keystone is a cute little mining town that exists mainly to host the many visitors to Mount Rushmore.
Our drive through Wyoming was uneventful and David got to do some of the driving this time. We disagree on how fast he was "allowed" to go. You can read his perspective on his blog at: http://favoritesonsspiel.blogspot.com/

Crazy Horse Memorial is an unfinished monument to the Lakota leader. The memorial is a work in progress and will take more years than I will be alive to complete, since it is funded only by donations and admission fees. It was the belief of the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, that this should not be a state or federal project and his family carried on this philosophy after his death in 1982. Even though he is gone, the artist's wife and seven of his ten children have continued the project. We spent about two hours looking through the exhibits and learning about the sculpture, sculptor, and the Native American people. I bought a necklace made of red jaspar, silver, and black buffalo horn. It has a carved turtle ("Keya" in Lakota) pendant that represents overcoming obstacles in life and finding alternatives and solutions to problems that are faced. I like that idea.

Mount Rushmore is less than 20 miles from Crazy Horse also in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We arrived right when it was starting to rain. It was dinner time, so we decided to eat at the Carvers Cafe at the monument and wait for the rain to subside. The skies cleared soon and we proceeded to walk the Presidential Trail which takes you to the base of the mountain for different perspectives of the sculpture. We climbed up and down about 400 stairs and took more photos than we ever needed of the four presidents. 

We wandered through the Visitor Center, and watched a movie about the sculptor and the reason why these four president's were chosen. Originally, the idea of a mountain sculpture was to highlight the legends of the West like Lewis & Clark, and Buffalo Bill Cody. But the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, a prolific artist of the time stated that he would not devote his life to this project unless it was something that had meaning to the entire nation. He chose the four presidents, to create an eternal reminder of the birth (Washington), growth (Jefferson), development (Roosevelt), and preservation (Lincoln) of a nation that is dedicated to democracy and liberty.

We stayed for the lighting ceremony which happened at 9:30 p.m. It took that long for it to get dark enough. It was a nice ceremony that stirred the patriotic spirit within me. It was a good end to a fun and educational day.