Tuesday continued, Blackhills, Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and Sturgis

Because I've never been a huge fan of cameras, I often forget to take pictures of incredible sights.  I usually am too wrapped up in enjoying the moment.  When I was younger, before widespread internet usage, where you can google all sorts of images, I used to buy postcards on trips, rather than take pictures.  I figured the postcard will have angles I can't always get with my camera.  Besides, at the time, digital was unheard of and you took multiple shots, eating up rolls of film, to be sure you got at least ONE good shot.

Now, I do have a small digital camera.  It's great, as long as I remember to use it.  I have a very small screen on my cell phone too, with lower resolution, so it's not great to use as a camera, but it will do in a pinch.  There again, I often forget that it has that option.

But mostly tho, I forget to take pictures.  It's me, not the camera, at fault.  So the first half of our trip has one picture, but I do have lots of brochures and maps and notes.  Some I can find online, I'm sure, to share.  Some notes tho, exist only in my head. Those will be shared here too, well, most of them.  There are a few that might not be entirely suitable for public consumption.  Like the misreading of the bumper sticker that made Jerry and me laugh belly bursting guffaws that startled the park ranger.

Anywhoooo, this map of the Black Hills & Badlands of South Dakota & Northeastern Wyoming was used so much that I left one copy in tatters and had to pick up another.  That and I love maps.  When I was a kid, I was happy with a map and a dictionary, even if where we were going did not correspond with the map.  Someday I will visit the tri~state area of PA, NJ, and NY and be able to make way way to the Lackawaxen and Delaware, where Zane Grey's home is, provided the roads haven't changed in the past forty years.

I think this will be my last post of the day, I'm going astray here.

So that Tuesday afternoon, of the 22nd, back in August, we drove outta the badlands and the Pine Ridge, right over to the Black Hills.  We skirted Rapid City and zipped down 79, ooohing and awwing at the looming mountains, the granite faces of which were looking pretty shear and not supporting much growth.  Then we took a sharp turn on forty and merged with the traffic flowing toward Mount Rushmore.  I was decidedly underwhelmed with Mount Rushmore when I actually saw it.

Lemme 'splain, Lucy; lemme 'splain.  See, we've all seen these huge up~close pictures of the faces of our four presidents.  But we don't usually see them from afar, from the perspective of what the typical viewer of the actual Mount Rushmore would see.  We don't see the faces nestled into the surrounding mountain ledges and faces.  So when we do see these sixty foot faces, we're all like, wow, sixty foot face!  Four of them!  woah!

But when I saw them, they seemed so small compared to what I expected, what I had built up in my mind.  I was thinking I would veer around the mountain side and up head would be looming Washington's nose and it would scare me, from the sheer size of this monument.  So when I actually did see it, from afar, from the Avenue of Flags, I was kinda disappointed.  I felt like, dude, that's it?

Then I caught myself and realized 400 men worked on that.  I looked at the features and imagined men crawling across the surface, hanging in harnesses, as they chiseled away, sculpting the finishing touches on this one's nose and that one's eyebrow.  I looked at Washington's lapels and thought about the detailed attention.  Then I could appreciate it all, a little.

Perhaps it also had to do with the crowded chaos around me, the people walking their non~service pets around and past signs that forbade you from bringing your animals farther, the smokers leaning next to the No Smoking signs, the obnoxious children who sniveled and whined, the multitudes of inconsiderate people who stop to take their pictures completely mindless of others moving behind them in the walkway.  Perhaps it had to do with the heat and sun and discomfort of standing for too long, listening to the woman berating her husband for bringing the wrong camera, watching people climb up to perch on rocks when the signs clearly ask you not to do that.  Perhaps I was feeling peevish anyway and this all just made me feel more irate.  But I was super glad to leave the maddening crowds of ill mannered people behind and seek refuge in my vehicle.

As we drove the seventeen miles to Crazy Horse, I sat back and enjoyed the mountains, refusing to look at traffic, but instead, keeping my gaze slanted upward, toward the peaks and cliffs and sky.  For as much as I was underwhelmed with Mount Rushmore, I was that much impressed with Crazy Horse.  They seemed to have put much thought into every aspect of the ongoing project as well as the visitors' center, the museum, the collections, the stories told, and so forth.  I've included a link, but there are many sites online which discuss Crazy Horse the man and also the monument.  I urge you to take a look, especially if you are unfamiliar with either.

They plan to spend the next five years or so, focusing on the hand and the upper part of the horse's mane, of which the extended hand rests.  Yes, it will take considerable amount of time and work yet and it may never be completed as there are several controversial points of view to consider; but the amount of work, the type of imagination and creative forces at play, this one family's story and determination, and the message brought forth is intensely impressive to me.  We left that memorial feeling awed and hopeful in ways that the white granite faces of four {which could all fit on the side of Crazy Horse's head} failed to inspire.  This reddish brown mass of sediments that made up that mountain was easily visible to us later was we found an unbeaten dirt path which took us to the top of a high mountain, allowing us to look out over the other mountains, down into canyons, and gave us a respite from the touristy towns below.

We saw mule tailed deer and chipmunk, wrens and sparrows, and towering rock formations with cracks and crevices from which pine trees grew.  We did not see the big horn rams the road signs below warned us to watch for.  We didn't see sure footed goats perilously clinging to the side of rocky mountain faces.  We did see huge pick up trucks that were meant and probably needed for these dirt roads, especially during the winter months.  And we saw more than a few puzzled or amused looks when our lil yaris bounced along the track, crossing over the cattle gap, kicking up a low lying cloud of dust as it passed by.

That night, as the last of the day's light left the sky, we pulled into Sturgis, down Main, past the myriad of biker shops, leather shops, tattoo shops, bars, and diners.  We found our airbnb for the night and met our host, who had a few suggestions for us the following day, as we stayed in Sturgis for two nights.  More on Sturgis tomorrow!