Summer 2011 Road Trip: SD/WY/CO/UT

Monday…

We woke up this morning to an absolutely perfect day—sunny, blue skies, and about 60 degrees! As miserable as yesterday was, we are glad we decided to stay an extra night. We stopped first at Crazy Horse Memorial, which was amazing! It is the largest mountain carving in the world and is a tribute to Crazy Horse, a Lakota Indian leader and battle strategist who was stabbed in the back by an American soldier under a flag of truce. The memorial honors the spirit of Crazy Horse and all of the Native Americans who fought for their lands. Work on the carving began in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor from Boston, working alone. When Korczak died his wife continued to oversee the progress on the carving--she still does--and most of their ten children have devoted their lives to it as well. The carving has now seen three generations of workers, and still has a long way to go. Crazy Horse’s face is complete, and I think most of the work being done now is to carve out the horse’s head. According to the sculptor, Crazy Horse’s left arm is thrown out pointing in answer to the white man’s derisive question, “Where are your lands now?” Crazy Horse replied “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”

The memorial is also supported 100% by donations and visitors. Korczak decided he did not want federal contributions or taxpayer money to fund the project, because he wanted to stay true to the spirit of the Native Americans and interested visitors to the monument; twice he even refused millions of dollars in federal funding.

It was neat visiting the park today, because the crew did a commemorative blast in honor of Memorial Day. The explosion removed 954 tons of granite near the base of the carving. This picture gives an idea of the enormous scale of this monument. It’s incredible.

 Crazy Horse Memorial carving from the viewing deck

 1/300th size sculpture of what the memorial will look like when it is finished

 Memorial Day commemorative blast

After the blast, we left the park and headed back to Mt. Rushmore. Fortunately the parking pass we paid for yesterday is good through the end of 2011, so we didn’t have to pay again.

Mt. Rushmore was also amazing. It was interesting to learn about the various blasting and carving techniques that were used to create such smooth surfaces and defined contours on the faces. We learned that the sculptors had originally started carving Jefferson’s face to the left of Washington’s face, but partway through they realized that the granite in that area was not suitable for carving, so they blasted away what they had carved to that point and instead put Jefferson to the right of Washington.

 Eric and I walked the Presidential Trail along the front of the monument, which curves around to places where you can get better views of each president’s face. We also wandered around in the sculptor’s house, where we was the 1/12th scale model of the monument, from which workers took measurements to figure out how much to blast on the mountain carving. They used a pointing system by extending a scaffolding rod off the edge of the model’s head and dropping a lead line to the point they wanted to measure, such as the tip of the nose. This told them how far they could blast in that area before reaching what would be the tip of the nose. The model measurements were one inch to one foot on the monument, and the same pointing system was set up on the monument.

Before leaving the park, we stopped at a picnic area on one of the hiking trails and made lunch. Then we drove to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming.

On the way to WY, we stopped and had a beer at Firehouse Brewing Co. in Rapid City, SD

Devil’s Tower is enormous. You can see it from more than ten miles away. The only establishments in the area are the KOA campground where we stayed and a souvenir shop. We arrived at about 5:30 and set up camp… Best. View. Ever.

 We walked around the souvenir shop a little bit, but it was pretty windy and cold (this time we knew it would be cold—got down to 37 degrees), so we spent the rest of the evening cooking dinner and watching a movie in our tent. At least there was not freezing rain.

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It was cool and rather windy when we woke up on Tuesday, but still sunny and nice outside. We drove up to the visitor’s center at the base of Devil’s Tower and learned all about the various Native American legends about the tower’s formation. Scientists maintain that about 50 million years ago molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and cooled underground. As it cooled it contracted and fractured into columns. Over the years the sedimentary rock has eroded away and exposed the igneous rock underneath. The tower is 867 feet tall from its base, and the top of it is 1.5 acres.

View of Devil's Tower from the base

We hiked around the base of the tower and even climbed around some of the boulders at the base, and we saw some different things along the way.

 

 Two climbers. If you click on the picture to open it full size and zoom in you should be able to see them in the lower part of the photo around the tree in the middle-- one is wearing a red jacket and one is wearing blue.

 Prayer cloths tied around tree branches. Devil's Tower is a sacred place to many Native American tribes, and the prayer cloths are their offerings for their petitions.

 A red squirrel. This little guy ran across the trail in front of me, hopped up on a branch, seemingly for a photo op, I got a couple of shots, then he scampered off.

Our next stop was Colorado, so after our hike we go back on the road. We stopped for dinner at Coopersmith’s Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins, then drove two more hours to Frisco where Eric’s family has a condo. We got there around 10:00, and we were wiped out! Off to a nice warm bed!

**Having trouble continuing to upload photos. I'll post more tomorrow when we are in a place with a steady wifi signal.