Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse Monument & Mount Rushmore – 19th- 21st May 2010

Wind Cave is a very small hole in the ground but when you go down inside it is massive. There are 200 miles of tunnels in a square mile of ground and the tunnels are all on different levels. As it was raining when we arrived here we decided to go in the cave and do all the above ground stuff when the weather fined up.

Original opening, you go in by elevator now

                                                               Boxwork formations

Today we did a tourist drive through Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore. The wildlife abounds. We have great photos of bison, pronghorn deer, prairie dogs, eagles etc. Still haven’t seen a mountain lion or a bear.

                                                                              Bison

                                                                     Pronghorn Deer

Continuing our journey we travelled through some very winding roads with switchbacks and pigtails

Check out the sign

till we came to Crazy Horse Monument. This is a massive sculpture of the famous indian chief sculptured into the mountain that was started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski at the request of Chief Standing Bear on behalf of the Lakota indian nation. After all these years there is still only the head done. The sculptor died in 1982 and the family have continued on with the blasting and shaping of the mountain. It is now a big tourist attraction housing a large indian museum.

Crazy Horse Monument, this what it looks like with only the face done so far

This is what it will eventually look like

We then travelled a further 17 miles to Mount Rushmore and arrived just as the ranger was starting a guided tour so we got all the guff about the sculptor Gutzon Borglum and the reasons for building the monument.

Mount Rushmore (workmen hanging on Lincoln's nose not snot)

Nanny mouse enjoyed the tour a lot and wants to become a ranger

Lots of tunnels on the road so we had to leave the RV behind, even had to put the rear view mirrors in at times

The next day took us to the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs. This is a place where somebody was using a grader and accidently scraped across a large bone and after calling in an expert they found it to be a place where at least 58 mammoths perished. It is a working archealogical site and you can watch the progress as they dig up the bones. It is all under cover and everything is in amazing condition. It reminded us of our experience at the terracotta warrriors.

What the mammoth used to look like (spot the mouse- what was that story about the elephant and the mouse?)

What the mammoth looks like today