Sunday, 26 June 2011

Custer State Park and Crazy Horse Monument

For those of you who make fun us for getting up so early, this morning we were on the 70 mile wildlife loop in Custer State Park at 6:30. And guess what! We were the only ones there. In a moment I will recount the wildlife we saw. However, let us first say a word about Custer State Park. THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME STATE PARK WE HAVE EVERY SEEN! It is incredibly beautiful and it is huge. The park encompasses 50,000 acres. The park has over 1900 buffalo grazing in the wild. In addition we saw turkey, pronghorn sheep, white tail deer, burros, and horses. While this may not sound particularly overwhelming, take a look at the buffalo pictures below taken by Meriam. One picture we took which did not come out was of a female deer with her newborn fawn.

You thought we were joking when we mentioned the “mother of all turtles” in our last post!

Some things require drastic action. This required calling out the sheriff’s department!

After taking the wildlife loop, we went on to the Crazy Horse Monument. We attempt to stay away from overly commercial tourist traps, so we approached this monument with some trepidation. However, let us state: The Crazy Horse Monument is a must if you are anywhere in the vicinity. We do not want to compare Mt. Rushmore with Crazy Horse. While both are sculptures carved in mountains, they have two entirely different themes. You have already read our feelings about Mt. Rushmore. It was funded by the government. To the contrary, Crazy Horse Monument is entirely funded by private monies. In fact the sculptors have refused to take any government funds.

In 1948, Chief Henry Standing Bear and other elders of the Lakota Sioux Indian tribe approached Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor then working with Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created Mt. Rushmore. The elders were told Mr. Ziolkowski that the Indians also had great heroes and asked him to create a monument which would honor all the Indians of North America. Mr. Ziolkowski accepted this assignment and made it his life work. Although Mr. Ziolkowski is now dead, his family of ten children continue to pursue the dream of Mr. Ziolkowski and the elders.

The Indians chose Chief Crazy Horse as the symbol for this monument. They chose Crazy Horse for the mountain carving because he was a great and patriotic hero. Crazy Horse’s tenacity of purpose, his modest life, his unfailing courage, and his tragic death set him apart and above the others. The monument is being carved in a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota, near Mt. Rushmore. This monument, when finished, will stand 641 feet long and 563 feet high. To give it some perspective, the four faces of the Presidents of Mt. Rushmore will fit entirely in just the head of Chief Crazy Horse! As you can see from the photographs, Chief Crazy Horse’s head has been completed. Work is now being done on his out stretched arm. One of the attached photos shows a completed statue of Chief Crazy Horse. This model statue was completed by Mr. Ziolkowski prior to his beginning the work on the mountain. This is ultimately what the mountain will look like when completed. Because of many uncertainties, including weather, funding, etc. there is no current estimate when the statue will be completed. To date, millions of tons of rock have already been removed. In fact, a typical blast day produces 2000 to 3000 tons of rock fragments.

We left Crazy Horse Monument for the next part of our trek. We plan to take 4-5 days to get to Glacier National Park. On the way we will drive through Bear Tooth Parkway in northern Wyoming (provided the weather – read snow!) allows this.
The last couple of photos today show the snow covered Rocky Mountains as we approach the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park. The last photo is a view from our camper as we prepare for the evening.

This is a collection of 480 different colors of beads the Indians used for their bead work. You can see the expression on Meriam’s face – “Oh boy, a new hobby!”

The Rockies as we are approaching the Eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park (note the snow on the mountains!)

This is a view from the camper as we prepare to call it a day!

P.S. Meriam and I would like to add a special welcome to Quint Gale and his family. Mrs. Gale home schools her children and will be using some portions of our blog for their social studies curriculum.

P.S.S. We apologize in advance for the numerous pictures in this post. As you will see, I have grouped them into Flash gallery. We felt the others posted in the blog’s body needed some descriptive comments (Flash pictures do not allow me to include descriptions.)