July 10-11
Sunday we went to visit Crazy Horse. I wanted to apologize in person for driving through the sacred Black Hills.
You can see the carving, definitely a work in progress, from the highway. This is all funded by private donations, entrance fees, and souvenir sales.
Work started in 1948. If the carving and blasting are ever finished, Crazy Horse will be the largest work of sculpture in the world. According to a film at the visitor center, the entire Mount Rushmore Monument could fit inside Crazy Horse’s head.
He is to be depicted stretching out an arm over his horse’s mane. The pose recalls a legendary exchange in which a white man taunted Crazy Horse by asking, “Where are your lands now?”
His answer, which sounds a little Serbian, was: “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”
The Indian museum at Crazy Horse has what you might expect: arrowheads, bows, feather bonnets, lots of almost miraculous beadwork, Seminole clothes, portraits of Sioux and Cheyenne who fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
A fascinating place to spend an hour or two.
The sculptor who began the project was Korczak Ziolkowski. His story is fascinating, but I won’t recount it here. He’s easy to find in a Google search. I mean, who else is named Korczak Ziolkowski?
We saw another unusual sight in the parking lot. It looked like a three-wheel convertible and reminded me of the old Dimaxion car of the 1950s. The driver saw us trying to snap photos of it and stopped.
It’s called a Slingshot and is made by Polaris. It is not classed as a car, but as a reverse three-wheel motorcycle.
After Crazy Horse, we went back to Custer State Park. This time we followed a road through the mountains past phenomenal rocks that stood up like needles or spires. And of course, that’s what they were named for.
The route took us through a couple of one-lane tunnels, which were kind of fun. There’s no light or signal of any kind. So it’s sort of like a game of chicken. The first one in has the right of way.
We were able to walk to dinner our first night (July 9) at the Buglin’ Bull, which features house brand beers. I had a brown that was good enough, but like a lot of browns a little thin and watery. This one had a touch of sweetness, but not a lot. So that was in its favor.
The Armstrong IPA (Custer’s middle name) was another story altogether. It was beautifully fragrant with hops and very bitter. The bartender even warned me about the bitterness.
We shared an appetizer of mushrooms stuffed with buffalo sausage and then split a huge pork chop.
Sunday night, the 10th, we drove up the hill to the Chophouse on the Rocks, a restaurant attached to the Bavarian Inn a short way from the motel. They had run out of sauerbraten, so we settled on jager schnitzel. This is a breaded pork chop pan fried and served with mashed potatoes and red cabbage.
It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great. There was gravy on the schnitzel but it looked almost congealed, so I figure that, like much of the food available here, it was factory processed rather than made in the kitchen. The meat was also dry, but that’s common with schnitzel.
We had a few glasses of red wine with dinner. Joanna had a pinot noir, possibly from California, where the best American pinots come from. I had a cabernet sauvignon, a blend of some kind recommended by the waitress, and a merlot. They were all lightweight, unobjectionable, but not outstanding.
Monday, the 11th, we headed for Mount Rushmore. It cost us a whole $11 to park there, and our old-folks passes to the National Parks didn’t count. But that was the only charge.
We were able to park in a garage, out of the sun. That’s a real novelty here.
The monument is impressive enough: Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt sort of obscured by Jefferson, and then Lincoln all on his own. By the way, you can see Roosevelt’s pince nez spectacles.
The sight took us both back to Angkor Thom and the art lecture about faces with flat Cambodian noses. That’s because the faces in the monument have definitely Barang noses, which stick out.
Joanna noticed that, although I may not be presidential material, I have a presidential nose.
Truth to tell, as fun as the monument is to look at, that didn’t top my list of reasons for being there. We found the cafeteria and went in.
This is where Eva Marie Saint shot Cary Grant with blanks. It’s one of the great scenes of American movies. Mount Rushmore through the window, and bang, a guy falls.
I have only watched the movie on the small screen, but they say that the scene was shot several times to get it right. They say that in the final take, a boy in the background covers his ears before the shot is fired.
Anyhow, it was very inspiring to be in the footsteps of Crazy Horse and Alfred Hitchcock on two consecutive days.
We went into Custer State Park again on the way back from Mount Rushmore. The road we took, U.S. 16A, is also known as the Iron Mountain Road. It has three one-lane tunnels, each with a view to the north of the Mount Rushmore Monument. We traveled south through two of them, but the third was around a bend and we faced north.
The road climbs steep hills and at three points runs under and over itself. We were on the way up, so we passed under a bridge and then crossed the bridge over the road we just traveled. They call them pigtail bridges.
We went back to the Wildlife Loop Road and saw a solitary buffalo bull walking by the road. Actually we saw two, but at different times. I’m pretty sure the first one couldn’t have gotten ahead of us to appear the second time.
This time we noticed the prairie dog town. The little buggers were all over the place.
We also saw two herds of buffalo. One was so far away that the binoculars gave us very little detail. The other was up a hill from the road. We got out of the car, as many people did, to get a closer look. A large bull grazed at the edge of the herd, and we got close enough to get a good look at him, but he didn’t even look up at us, so we knew we were okay.
This time, the burros showed up. They frequent a stretch of the Wildlife Loop. They are not completely wild. People feed them and pet them. Someone fed a burro from inside her vehicle. The animal stuck its nose through the window trying to get more.
They are real traffic stoppers, not just because of their antics, but also because they stroll down the middle of it.
Tonight we walked to Sage Creek Grill, a couple of blocks from the motel. I checked the menu online and thought I was going to be restricted to ginger ale. Not so. They had a Crow Creek IPA in a can; very good. Then I saw there was a draft list. I had The Knuckle Brewing Company’s pale ale and its IPA, both of which were very good. The Knuckle IPA wasn’t as fragrant as the Crow Creek, but it was bitter enough to make a fine dessert.
Here’s wishing everyone a fine dessert.
Harry
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