Friday, October 6, 2006 Sioux Falls to Custer, SD

Friday morning we left Sioux Falls and drove west through the towns of Sturgis, Deadwood, and Lead. No signs of any mad motorcycle gangs in Sturgis. Just some empty bars proclaiming their biker friendliness and a forlorn looking Harley Davidson store. Deadwood was a Hollywood-created old western and now mini-casino town, complete with a Gold Nugget and other slot machine run cafes. Brett disagrees with this summation. He claims that Deadwood was one of the original goldrush, western towns with stories of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. OK.

We drove through these towns as we entered the Black Hills, so named because of the dark color of the Ponderosa Pines against the hills. Our first real stop was Mt. Rushmore. They have just recently finished building a new visitor’s center which is reminiscent of several of the monuments in DC, with a hall of flags (one from every state), a replica of the sculptor’s studio, and information on each of the presidents honored by the monument (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln). The new center is nothing like the scenes from Hitchock’s North by Northwest. There were lots of information on the sculptor and photo chronicles of the 14 years of construction. This is a great time of year to be here. It was warm enough for short sleeves, but there were very few people. There were actually times when we would stand at a viewing platform and it was quiet.

Following Mt. Rushmore, we stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial. This was quite a story. As soon as we drove down the long driveway to the memorial (which I incorrectly thought was another federal project) I knew we were in trouble. These very nice women at the gate charged us a $20 entrance fee and handed us a brochure. From the entrance one can see the face of Crazy Horse that has been cut into the mountain and various holes, ledges, and the sounds of continuing construction underway. The visitor’s center was a huge complex of artist galleries, two cinemas, a restaurant, gift store, artifacts museum, and a museum of the sculptor’s original log cabin. There was a bus that took tourists to the base of the mountain and back, for $4 per person, and we warily handed over our cash for that as well. When purchasing our bus tickets, we were told that we needed to watch the orientation video inside the visitor center before taking the bus ride. We headed in to wait for the next showing. Luckily the film was included in our admission fee, or we would have headed for the door. The sculptor or designer of this monument was named Korczak Ziolkowski. Born in Boston of Polish descent, he was self-taught and acted as an assistant to the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore. Apparently, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear was impressed by one of his sculptures which had one first price in the 1939 NY Worlds Fair. A group of Chiefs invited him to design and build a moment to the Native Americans. He started work on the memorial in 1947 when he was 40 years old. He spent the rest of his life working on it and died before the even the face of a very elaborate sculpture was finished. Luckily he married and they had 10 kids who all live on or near the memorial and most of whom now run the “non-profit” business of continuing the construction of the memorial. While he was alive, he turned down two offers of 10 million in federal funds. It’s definitely a business, but they claim that they are still progressing toward completion of the sculpture. They conduct blasts several times a week and there was machinery operating up on the mountain. The size of the memorial is so massive that the entire sculpture of the presidents’ faces on Mt. Rushmore could fit into Crazy Horse’s hair. The story of this man’s obsession with the memorial is interesting, but we were still somewhat suspicious of the entire enterprise. There was so support mentioned from any tribal leaders in the orientation video, and no official documentation of collaboration with the tribes; definitely something on which we want to do some additional research.

We drove through the town of Custer, disappointed by the appearance of a Cheesecake Factory in a historic old bank building. That is just not acceptable!!!

Once our tourist duties were complete, we took a drive into Custer State Park, along the Wildlife Viewing Loop and were amazed at what we saw; herds of bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, more prairie dogs, hundreds of deer, and an amazing herd of elk. We had to wind our way through the bison. We also met a gap toothed woman along the road. She motioned to us to pull over and then offered to show us something special off the side of the road, something about which they don’t tell the tourists. She talked of tipi circles along a dry creek bed, but I was just a slight bit suspicious. We nodded appreciatively, and told her we were looking for elk. She then proceeded to tell us about a trail head down the road from which she had heard them calling. We thanked her and moved on, and it was soon after that when we saw the amazing herd of elk. The light was fading so we were unable to get photos, but the bull elk with the herd was very impressive.

We spent the night at the Blue Bell lodge and cabins. Our cabin was sweet and warm. We had dinner in the lodge. Our waiter first came to our table and explained that they were out of a few things. Brett ordered a buffalo steak and I ordered chicken. He wasn’t sure if they still had chicken and had to go check. He returned saying that yes, they did have chicken. After putting our order into the kitchen, he returned again to the table sheepishly explaining that they no longer had the buffalo steak, in fact, they had no steaks at all. He told us, quietly and in confidence, that the lodge was undergoing a change of ownership at the end of the week and the owners were intent on depleting their inventory. We were apparently scraping the bottom of the barrel, yum!