7/11/21 Black Hills, South Dakota

 

Crazy Horse Monument

7/11 Every Time we come here to visit Joan and Craig we say we’re going to stay for a week but it never gets into the schedule. This is one of the most beautiful places in the world (I know, we say that a lot throughout our travels across this beautiful country) with so much to see and do that we have decided the next family reunion should be here. 

This time we stayed at Sheridan lake State Park and it is magnificent. As far as the eye can see, the Black Hills are covered with pine/fir trees which look black when approaching them from miles away.  Truly amazing is the beautiful grass covering the forest floor.  We didn't fill our empty water tank at the last stop figuring we were going to fill it at this campground. They said they had potable water but they didn't say the spigot could not attach a hose! Good thing there’s a lake to bath in. The park is quiet with lots of room between sites as you can see in photo with John doing his morning stretch routine we call "Nelsen's" after our Hawaii friend Dean Nelsen who put the basic routine together. Joan and Craig came out to visit us at the campground and we had great time learning about plans for their new house with a 360 degree view from the hilltop behind their current home.

 View from RV

Looks like Joan’s Subaru Towing the RV

Crazy horse memorial is a fabulous place to visit. The size of this project is incredible. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain (in background of picture above) about 10 miles from Joan and Craig's house. Crazy Horse (1840ish - 1877) was a great warrior who led the Lakota against Custer in the 1887 battle known as Custers Last Stand. Lakaota Chief, Henry Standing Bear (1874-19....), a cousin of Crazy Horse (1840-1877), commissioned the poor, self taught, Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski saying "My fellow chiefs would like the white man to know that the red man has great hero’s also." Standing Bear gave the Forest Service his personally owned 900 acres of land in exchange for the rights to erect this memorial "to honor the principles and values for which Native Americans stood and to honor all the indigenous people of North America. Crazy Horse is riding his steed out of the granite of the sacred Black Hills with his left hand gesturing forward in response to the derisive question asked by a Cavalry man, “Where are your lands now?” Crazy Horse replied, “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”" Korczak's final dimensions were planned to be 641 feet long and 563 feet high. The arm of Crazy Horse will be 263 feet (80 m) long and the head 87 feet high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each only 60 feet high. Started in the late 1940's, it could take a hundred years to finish due to issues with funds, access to qulified stone masons, weather and millions of tons of more rock to remove. Built entirely from private funds so that no government agency can have any say/control of the project, Korczak's family are still running the operation which is now developed into a heritage center and a university where Native Americans can go for free to learn about their culture.  Photo below is of Korczak and Chief Standing Bear. 

Crazy Horse Final Product