The Unexpected Black Hills

After the heavy rains of the night before, we opted to delay our bike ride on the George S. Mickelson Bike Trail to tomorrow and spent the day touring the Blacks Hills of South Dakota.  It was the first day of this trip in which we both wore jackets all of the day ... the rain brought a cold front through the area ... highs in the 50s.

First stop was the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial.   This is a bit of a different US Park Service experience ... more of a public-private partnership than a traditional US Park.  The sculptor, Gutzon Borglom, son of Danish immigrants, forever wished that the monument would be free of charge to the public, but to fund the upkeep  of the monument, a parking fee is charged for anyone wishing to park to visit the monument.  Certainly not a problem supporting the monument, but a bit different than the usual U.S. Park Service operation.  Tourists were pouring into the monument (five lanes of cars entering the parking area) and we had arrived early.

I had the sense that the sculptures had a totemic quality, imbued with sentiments that perhaps I did not share with the vast numbers of people who visited Mt. Rushmore.  The sculptures represented the heads of great leaders in our nation's history ... the artist's vision to blast these heads into stone and the technical expertise needed to move that amount of rock was interesting ... but, it felt as if this was a pilgrimage to Americana and a short trip to the gift shop showed the degree to which Americans (and international tourists) wanted to express their American-ness by purchasing stuff ... lots of stuff.

Next stop was the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway through the Black Hills National Forest and Custer State Park ... one of the nation's top scenic byways (although I don't know who creates these "top lists") ... but, it was an amazing road.  Hair pin turns, corkscrew turns over trestle bridges, narrow one lane tunnels blasted through rock (some so narrow that we pulled in Fritz's mirrors for safe passage).  The Needles section of the byway went through land of rock spires, jagged mountain ridges lined with spruce and pine ... some patches of birch ... small lakes tucked in the rocky canyon bottoms.  And, bison wandering the meadows ...

On to the Crazy Horse Memorial ... in 1939 Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear contacted a sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, to come to the Black Hills to carve a monument to represent the great Native American heroes.  Korczak began work in 1948 along with his wife, Ruth, and subsequently had 10 children, 5 boys and 5 girls, who all helped with the work of the sculpture and running the visitor's center to fund the project.  Although both Korczak and Ruth are dead, their children continue the work of the sculpture and the vision to create a Native American university and medical school.

The scale of this project is enormous ... the Mt. Rushmore "heads" would fit into the "head" of Crazy Horse ... it is a bit hard to picture the completion of this project.  Clearly much has been accomplished, but the amount of work yet to be done is breathtaking.  There was so much emphasis on this project not receiving any state or federal funding ... that it felt a bit as if there was a message of political statement of entrepreneurship as the first and only to independence.  I left with a respect for the vision of the project and the multi-generational commitment to that vision ... also feeling a bit overwhelmed by what is left to be done ... and not sure how this project fits into the goals and objectives of the Lakota community that initiated this project. Perhaps Don Quixote lives ...

Bambi was delighted to be left behind at the campground for this trip ...