As you can see, it was overcast when we got there but the sun was just starting to peak through some gaps in the clouds. We looked around and waited. In about 10 minutes, the sun did break through and we had some nice blue sky as a background.
And here's a closeup of the guys. Roosevelt is a bit in shadow but we didn't want to wait around too long!
We left the still empty parking lot and started off towards Crazy Horse but came across this mountain goat. There was a baby one up higher that was making a lot of noise but we only had a few seconds to take a quick picture.
When we arrived at the Crazy Horse Memorial, the parking lot was also pretty much empty. My new theory is that bikers don't like to get up early. This is an incredible place and the story behind it is really amazing. Briefly, the first nations people of the Black Hills saw the success of Mount Rushmore and wanted to show the world that they also had heroes. They asked a Polish immigrant sculptor to carve a mountain statue of one of their most revered leaders, Crazy Horse. It was started in 1948 and is still far from finished. There is no projected date to complete the project and some native leaders have voiced opposition to it. In any case, it is a massive statue and will be the biggest in the world when completed.
As a size comparison, the 4 heads of Mount Rushmore would fit inside the head section of the Crazy Horse statue. You can see the white outline of the horse's head on the rock. They use explosives to do rough shaping then use other tools to smooth it out.
This is what the completed statue will look like.
It still wasn't even slightly looking like rain so we headed off to Custer State Park where there was a 14 mile scenic route called Needles Drive. It's a very winding and steep road that goes through some very small tunnels and passes by some needle-like rock formations. This was our third activity of the day before 10:00 but we didn't want to waste any time if it was going to rain.
This is the Eye of the Needle rock formation.
This is the local version of a chipmunk. We saw a bunch of them when looking at the rocks.
Since the weather was still good, we drove to a small town called Custer. Not surprisingly, it was full of bikers too. We seemed to be fitting in quite well so we wandered around and looked in some stores. The interesting, or maybe odd thing about this town was that they had speakers all over the main street. And they were playing all country, all the time! At one point, they also had a live broadcast of a country radio station. And they had decorated buffalo all over town. These reminded us of the moose that were in Toronto some years ago.
Had to include this. The store above was full of stuffed animals, antlers, horns and fur things. A little bizarre for us but it seemed normal for the locals.
Again, lots of interesting restored buildings.
Our next adventure was planned in case it was raining, but it wasn't. We decided to visit Jewel Caves anyway. It's the 3rd largest cave system in the world at 167 miles of tunnels. We had an hour and a half tour that took us down almost 400 feet through a series of caves.
After all of that, we were a bit wiped out so went back to our hotel for a while before taking another walk in Hill City to see how the bikers were doing. They seemed to be just hanging out and showing off their bikes. From what we read, there were other major activities going on in the main city, Sturgis. But, a lot of people chose to stay here. Apparently, they come back year after year.
After the promised rain storm finally arrived, we were able to get out to Desperados, a local cowboy restaurant. I had ribs last night and had no intention of having them again, but they had buffalo ribs! I won't be eating much tomorrow. And Marilyn had a really good walleye or pickerel. She was also very full. We were glad that we just had a small snack for lunch!
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