We got up really early so we could beat the crowds at Mt.Rushmore, but forgetful Mom didn't charge the batteries to her camera overnight like she planned. We did get to the mountain around 9AM and found out the "No Pets" policy again. Stupid stuff but it didn't matter because we had a great view of the faces anyway.

Keystone was a town to stop at on the way, but we are too early for anything to be open but it didn't matter since it was mostly some touristy stuff except this chainsaw carvers work, which is quite impressive we thought.
Mom wanted "real" breakfast bacon and eggs but all she could find was sweets and vine which could have been ok at a different time.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a massive sculpture carved into the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Completed in 1941 under the direction of Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln, the sculpture's roughly 60-ft.-high granite faces depict U.S presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln

 

A lifesize portrait of the Polish American carver Korczak Ziolkowski

Leaving the monument we drove along a very nice and fun road, we stopped to look at the profile of one of the presidents.

At the Crazy Horse park, they didn't have any issues with a dog, so I was happy to go for a long walk and getting so much attention from so many people................I think I'm a star

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

This is a model on how it's supposed to look when it's done, it'll be huge.

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous actions against the U.S military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866) and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S troops under General Crook in May 1877 and was fatally wounded by a military guard, allegedly while resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members and was honored by the U.S Postal Service in 1982 with a 13¢ postage stamp that is part of its Great Americans series.
Crazy Horse resisted being photographed and was deliberately buried where his grave would not be found. Ziolkowski envisioned the monument as a metaphoric tribute to the spirit of Crazy Horse and Native Americans. He reportedly said, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." His extended hand on the monument is to symbolize that statement.

there's a lot of controversies about this carving too,..............

The memorial master plan includes the mountain carving monument, an Indian Museum of North America, and a Native American Cultural Center. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles (27 km) from Mount Rushmore. The sculpture's final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet (195 m) long and 563 feet (172 m) high. The arm of Crazy Horse will be 263 feet (80 m) long and the head 87 feet (27 m) high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet (18 m) high.

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion. If completed as designed, it will become the world's second tallest statue, after the Statue of Unity.

Henry Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota chief, and well-known statesman and elder in the Native American community, recruited and commissioned Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to build the Crazy Horse Memorial. In October 1931, Luther Standing Bear, Henry's older brother, wrote to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was carving the heads of four American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Luther suggested that it would be "most fitting to have the face of Crazy Horse sculpted there. Crazy Horse is the real patriot of the Sioux tribe and the only one worthy to place by the side of Washington and Lincoln." Borglum never replied. Thereafter, Henry Standing Bear began a campaign to have Borglum carve an image of Crazy Horse on Mt. Rushmore. In summer of 1935, Standing Bear, frustrated over the stalled Crazy Horse project, wrote to James H. Cook, a long time friend of Chief Red Cloud's, "I am struggling hopelessly with this because I am without funds, no employment and no assistance from any Indian or White.

On November 7, 1939, Henry Standing Bear wrote to Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked on Mount Rushmore under Gutzon Borglum. He informed the sculptor, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too. Standing Bear also wrote a letter to Undersecretary Oscar Chapman of the Department of the Interior, offering all his own fertile 900 acres (365 ha) in exchange for the barren mountain for the purpose of paying honor to Crazy Horse. The government responded positively, and the U.S Forest Service, responsible for the land, agreed to grant a permit for the use of the land, with a commission to oversee the project. Standing Bear chose not to seek government funds and relied instead upon influential Americans interested in the welfare of the American Indian to privately fund the project.

In the spring of 1940, Ziolkowski spent three weeks with Standing Bear at Pine Ridge, discussing land ownership issues and learning about Crazy Horse and the Lakota way of life. According to Ziolkowski, "Standing Bear grew very angry when he spoke of the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868). That was the one I'd read about in which the President promised the Black Hills would belong to the Indians forever. I remember how his old eyes flashed out of that dark mahogany face, then he would shake his head and fall silent for a long while.

Elaine Quiver, a descendant of one of Crazy Horse's aunts, said in 2003 that the elder Standing Bear should not have independently petitioned Ziolkowski to create the memorial, because Lakota culture dictates consensus from family members for such a decision, which was not obtained before the first rock was dynamited in 1948

She said:

They don't respect our culture because we didn't give permission for someone to carve the sacred Black Hills where our burial grounds are. They were there for us to enjoy and they were there for us to pray. But it wasn't meant to be carved into images, which is very wrong for all of us. The more I think about it, the more it's a desecration of our Indian culture. Not just Crazy Horse, but all of us.

After these two attractions it was time to drive a scenic loop .........narrow without guardrails, I could hear my Moms heart beating of fear and her hands was all sweaty despite AC.
Too bad there weren't enough places to pull over to take pictures, so many of them are taken while driving and the glare from the window shows...........My question to Mom is: how scared can you be when you drive with one hand while taking pictures with the other?

we squeezed through several tight spots where only one car at the time fit, good thing no-one was in a hurry

this was called the eye of the needle, pretty cool to drive through, 

Views are absolutely spectacular but Mom is scared of heights and can't drive too close to the edges so it was difficult to pull over to the side. She says she feels dizzy looking over the edge...The high altitude may also have something to do with it?

Black Elk Peak, which rises to 7,244 feet, is the range's highest summit.(2 200m)

we stopped in a town named Custer and had lunch. another typical town for tourists selling Tshirts and the usual trinkets. We didn't stay long and we soon continued west to next goal. We made it just over the border to Wyoming.

Bars do not want gunslingers in their establishment.............wonder why ?

Lots of painted bulls in this town too

Yesterday I didn't have very good wi fi so I'm a day behind in my story................we are very close to Yellowstone now............but I'll tell you more about that tomorrow morning because I'm sleepy from driving so far today..................HA says Mom: you, can't be tired from napping in the back most of the time.. She's considering teaching me how to drive so I can take over when she gets so sleepy.

Good Night kisses Ya'll..............

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