Saturday, June 2

We awoke after a rainy night, mildly damp but in good spirits. I -Steph again- made friends with a woman from Wyoming in the bathroom at the campsite. She told us that we had to go to Spearfish to see the Fish Hatchery, so we added that to our list of things to do in the Black Hills. Saturday was Crazy Horse day for us. A man named Korczak (I forget his last name) was asked by Henry Standing Bear to carve a mountain monument to the natives of the area, since they were overlooked during the construction of Mount Rushmore. Originally Mount Rushmore was to be of the heroes of the West like Lewis and Clark, did you know that? Anyway, Korczak created a beautiful sculpture model for his design for the Crazy Horse monument, Crazy Horse riding his steed, hair flowing back in the wind. In the photo you can see the real one off in the distance. I'm pretty sure if you click on the picture it will open up much larger. The first blast was made in June of 1948, and for decades it was Korcazk alone, and later his sons joined in, chipping and blasting away at the mountain. For the last 22 years, every June, there is the annual Volksmarch. It is a 6.2mile circuit hike up to the face of Crazy Horse. This monument is to be the biggest in the country (world?). It will be about 15ft higher than the Washington Monument in DC and over 600ft wide. It is a sculpture in the round, so it can be seen from three sides. We labored up the mountain, trying to maintain speed so we could accomplish more things later that day. There were hundreds of people there participating. Babies, toddlers, even elderly people trudging along. Devin and I helped a guy carry his stroller, with baby inside, up a particularly steep and rocky portion. We made it to the face, which was something like 9 stories high by itself, took a bunch of pictures, ate granola bars, and hiked the much shorter path back to the base. The 6.2 miles did not include the long walk from/to the parking lot. Whew! We spent a very short time in the visitor’s center, mostly to use the restroom and look at some photos of the mountain before blasting began. Then we set off for the town of Hot Springs, thinking we’d get a nice soak for our imminently aching feet and legs. When we got there, we found that the “Hot” Springs were really more like Tepid Springs, so we went to the local bath house to cheat. We got in their Jacuzzi to enjoy heated up spring water and relax our muscles. The proprietor of the Springhouse told us that they named the town Hot Springs to draw visitors (still works) but that there was all kinds of historical “evidence” that the spring water, though not hot, had real healing properties. After a soak and a nice soapy shower, we drove up to Wind Cave National Park. Wind Cave has over 120,000 miles of explored tunnels and rooms, all under about 1 sq mile of land. It also only has one known natural entrance, which is a hole in the rock that measures approximately 8X10 inches. The first explorers must have been quite skinny, or at least very flexible. I tried to dive in there, but I’m pretty sure my shoulders wouldn’t have made it all the way through. I also got a little claustrophobic waiting for Devin to snap the picture. Nowadays there is a much larger entrance with stairs and a railing that was dug/blasted out for us to tour part of the cave. It is a barometric cave, the name Wind Cave came from the air that blew out or sucked in from the natural entrance with changes in air pressure outside associated with the weather. The Native Americans felt it was a sacred place from which the buffalo came and was the origin of man. There is a fascinating formation called boxwork that is essentially fossilized cracks. It’s hard to describe. Wind Cave contains 95% of the world’s known boxwork. After Wind Cave, we decided to drive along the Wilderness Loop Road in Custer State Park to try to spot more bison as well as some other creatures. We saw bison and a few pronghorns, lots of deer and prairie dogs. Devin was set on seeing a huge herd of bison as the Custer brochure claimed to have 1500 head of buffalo in the park. He thought he spotted something over a hill, so we turned off onto a dirt road and discovered a huge mass (400?) of bison with tons of calves. It was really awesome. We headed to Keystone in search of dinner and ended up at a touristy (well the whole town was touristy) Mexican place called Arriba! Restaurant. The food was a lot better than we guessed it would be. We bought firewood just outside of town and went back to the campsite for a nice warm fire and more Harry Potter (of course!) before bed.