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“his story is inspirational to us all. And he looked like a total mountain man!” |
May 29th
After staying in a no frills motel 6 last night we took off for Devil’s Tower. After we got off I-90 we found that the Devil’s Tower would randomly appear over the hills we were going over but in random places, and then disappear a couple moments later. Strangely enough we were on a decently strait road we thought.
When we finally got to “The Ninja” we were impressed, it really is the only spire around the area. Apparently, the theory is that it was caused by an upward lava flow. Whatever it was, it looked pretty neat. Of course, we only spend like 10 minutes there. There is just so much you can do at a mountain when you have seen so many more impressive ones during the past week.
I think we are all getting home sick and tired of one another. Pete is driving us all off the wall. We don’t know if he is stir crazy or just home sick, but he is really bringing the rest of us down. Adam almost snapped at him last night, and his lack of team work has really gotten us all to become short fused with him as of late.
Our next stop was the Keystone, SD area and the Black Hills. Adam was pumped for the Black Hills, but they seemed to disappoint him. There were a couple cool spires that e peaked out of the trees, but nothing really to write home about. The first monument we went to was the Crazy Horse Monument. We were instantly a little ticked off that it was 25 dollars to get into.
Crazy Horse
Monument, is extremely Massive,
basically the Lakota are blowing up a mountain bit by bit to make this
gigantinormous monument. The head of Crazy Horse is bigger then Mount
Rushmore. They are making Crazy Horse
ride an even bigger horse and pointing. The history they relate is a little
off, but the main story of the place seems to be about the sculptor
himself. One man came out in the forties
after being asked by the Lakota to carve the mountain. For five years he worked
by himself on the mountain, then sired 10 children to do his labor. The
sculptor died in ’82 but his wife and seven kids keep the project alive. This
guy didn’t even get to detail the face before dying. The face is the only thing
full carved now. However his story is inspirational to us all. And he looked like a total mountain man!
The site refuses to take federal money because the sculptor was a total capitalist. He didn’t want tax dollars going towards the monument, because he felt like it would not get completed. Well, it looks like they haven’t done any work on the monument since 1998. So they are a far way from completing the medical center and university that are supposed to be surrounded by the mountain monument. The guest center was pretty nice, all hard wood and had many Native artisans. And a cool cat.
We then drove to Rushmore, where we were mad that our park pass was of no use there. We still had to pay the 8 dollars parking, but we made it back my going the wrong way and driving all over the national park wrong. I liked Rushmore’s museum way better the Crazy Horse, and the fact you could get a lot closer to Rushmore then to Crazy Horse made it better for me. But, if they ever complete crazy horse, then that is going to be vastly impressive.
We drove another hour and a half to a scary town where we found lodging at a Days Inn. The town of Wall is kind of weird. First of all, for thirty miles before the exit on I-90 there are all of these odd signs about Wall Drug. Wal Drug has dinosaurs, museums, five cent coffee, etc… So we were thinking, what the heck could this place be…
Well Wall consists of Wall Drug and that is all. Wal Drug has some sort of casino, bar, shopping strip set up like it was an old west town. Pete, Steve and I dined there tonight. We were not overly impressed. But the town is quite freaky, that is for sure.
Tomorrow we set off for home. We will see how that goes.
previous travel blog entry
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