crazy horse monument

Day 243 – Crazy Horse and the Black Hills (Part 3)

Day 243 of a Year Long Road Trip Along America’s Scenic Byways

I started the morning at Crazy Horse Memorial.  The parking fee gets visitors into the grounds and the museum, but getting closer to the incomplete monument requires a bus ride for an additional free.  I’m not much of a tour bus rider, so I skipped that part. If the monument were all I wished to see, I probably could have just snapped a photo from the highway and carried on. But I also checked out the museum and learned all sorts of interesting the facts.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!

Day 242 – Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills

Day 242 of a Year Long Road Trip Along America’s Scenic Byways

Another great day in South Dakota!  I have been pleasantly surprised.  I expected mostly flatland and prairie like Nebraska and North Dakota, but the Black Hills resemble the foot hills in Colorado.  We climbed through the pines to a towering granite outcropping carved with four presidential faces…Mount Rushmore!

Mount Rushmore

The national memorial pays tribute to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.  Each face is sixty feet tall from brow to chin and the each eye is eleven feet wide.  It took 400 workers 14 years to carve the monument with dynamite and jackhammers, and it cost just under one million dollars to complete.

The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, envisioned carving the presidents to their waist.  But with his death in 1941 and our nations involvement in World War II, his son who had accompanied him on the project declared it finished.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!
badlands

Day 241 – Badlands National Park and Black Hills

Day 241 of a Year Long Road Trip Along America’s Scenic Byways

The Badlands National Park

I don’t think I can describe the badlands any differently than I did yesterday.  Rock formations of clay and ash protrude from the prairie land and encompass rich fossil beds from the time that has become to be known as the golden age of mammals.  I spent the morning walking a handful of trails under intense sun.  The boardwalk
on The Door Trail and The Window Trail led directly into the rising sun.  I suspect the light would have been better had I walked them at sunset last night…oh well, the bands of colors were still noticeable.

In addition to taking the boardwalk trails, I also took The Notch Trail which passed over the rough terrain. The loose rock crunched under my feet as I followed the path to a log ladder that rose to a ledge which weaved its way around the spires.  The hike provided close up views of fossilized remains and ended overlooking the White River Valley.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!
toadstool park in Nebraska

Day 240 – Nebraska Heartland (Part 2)

Day 240 of Year Long Road Trip Along America’s Scenic Byways
Fort Robinson

Another enjoyable day in Nebraska…though most of the interesting sites I’ve seen have been within 100 miles of each other, and I have driven over 600 miles over a few days to see them!

We started out today at Fort Robinson where I camped last night.  The campground is the site of one of the most tragic events at the fort, the Cheyenne Outbreak.  Forcibly sent to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, a band of Northern Cheyenne, led by Dull Knife, escaped and fled across the plains of Kansas and Nebraska. The 149 men, women, and children were finally captured by troops from the fort in October 1878. 

Told they would have to return to the Indian Territory, they tried escaping again on January 9, 1879. The men opened fire on the guards with the few guns they had hidden away as the women and children fled toward the White River.  Many of the Cheyenne fell in the battle, one of the last of the Indian War.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!