We are now 39 days into our trip, over 1/3 of the way through and 1,700 miles from home in South Dakota!

We had quit a long drive to South Dakota from Colorado but we had enough time to stop at Crazy Horse Monument on our way to the hotel.

Day one – Crazy Horse Memorial, SD was absolutely beautiful!  The history, artifacts, buildings, etc. of the Oglala Lakota Indians in the Black Hills is amazing.  We spent a few hours here because there was so much to see, I would highly recommend anyone visiting South Dakota, or near it, to make a trip to see this!

The construction on the mountain started in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowsk, who was a self-taught sculptor.  He knew that he would never see his vision completed but hoped that it would continue on the mountain.  To this day some of his children and grandchildren are working on this project by carving the mountain and raising money to continue on.  If you zoom in on the pictures you will see what still needs to be done on the overlay picture on Part 1 photo and also what it will look like when it is eventually completed.  I can tell you this, it will not be finished in my lifetime because every person working on this monument is a volunteer. 

It is a non-profit project with no government money used, it is all volunteer and donations, which is absolutely amazing. 

Day two – Mt. Rushmore

First stop was Mt. Rushmore another beautiful mountain monument.  This is different from Crazy Horse because this was carved by men/women who were paid by the US Government.  The construction on this mountain only took 14 years from 1927 to 1941, because it was a paid project this monument wouldn’t take as long as Crazy Horse Memorial.  Personally, we do not feel that it’s as impressive as Crazy Horse either but it is still something to see!  A neat fact is that Thomas Jefferson’s face is a re-do, he was originally on the Washington’s right but the sculptor wanted him on the left, so they dynamited his face original spot off the mountain. (looking at the monument it’s opposite)

Second stop on day two – Bear Country, USA.  This is a drive-thru wildlife park with brown bear, black bear, Rocky Mountain Goat, Rocky Mountain Elk, Arctic wolves, and a few other mountain animals.  It’s about a 2-mile road all the way around however, when we reached the bears there was a traffic jam!  The bears walk freely, in front of vehicles trying to make their way through, we even had one walk right next to our car for a short time. 

After the wildlife park we stopped for lunch before heading to Chapel in the Hills.  An Evangelical Lutheran Church, it’s an exact replica of the Laerdal, Norway church that was constructed in the 1100’s. This chapel is much smaller than it looks in these pictures. To this day they still hold service in the chapel on Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday evening.  Behind the chapel is a “prayer walk” with a few statues to stop and pray or meditate.  The gift shop is the grass-roof building originally built in Norway and shipped to Rapid City and reassembled.  A log cabin sits to the left of the gift shop and was built in 1876 by a Norwegian immigrant.  This was not the original location for the cabin it was moved to this location in 1987 which is now a museum.  The items in the museum are handmade original pieces made by Norwegian, Danish and Swedish immigrants.

Third day – Badlands

Oh my, we cannot say enough about this National Park!  This is probably our most favorite thing we saw so far.  The 30 mile long Badlands Loop takes you through the north part of the park.  They say it should take about an hour or so, but that’s probably without stopping at the lookouts for sure.  We did stop at most of the lookouts and all where different and beautiful.  We entered on the Northeast Entrance, which I’m so glad we did because the views became better and better while driving.  Started our way into the park with amazing views however once we entered the prairie section about ½ way through we saw a few hundred prairie dogs as we entered the upper northwest part of the park.  The colors were absolutely breathtaking, more so then on the northeast side.  The pictures do not do them justice, we just kept saying “wow this is just amazing what a beautiful site”!

We haven’t been able to do much of anything in late afternoon/early evening due to severe weather over the past 3 days.  We felt like we’re in Florida with these afternoon storms but we are miles away!

We will be traveling to several different places over the next 2 weeks to work our way towards Seattle to meet family for an Alaskan Cruise! We can’t wait to see everyone!!