On The Road: Day 7

Here I am in Custer, South Dakota. Yes, yes. You're all asking, "Why Custer?" Mount Rushmore is in Keystone. Well, the answer: just 4 miles away from Custer is Crazy Horse Monument. We thought that Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse were a lot farther apart than they really were. We booked out hotel as far west as we could because we do have a lot of driving to do tomorrow. So today we stopped at Mt. Rushmore, walked the presidential trail, and even saw someone up on top of the mountain. That person was walking around between Washington's head and Jefferson's head. That area is restricted so the worker that we pointed him/her out to had to call security to notify the proper authorities. We listened to a couple of talks about the mountain and why those four presidents were chosen. I think I've learned more about our nation's history in the last two weeks than I did when I was taking American History during my sophomore year of high school.

After exhausting all of our activities at Mt. Rushmore, we drove over to Crazy Horse. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about (and I don't blame you, I had no idea who he was before this): Crazy Horse was the name of a Native American chief who fought for his people's freedom He refused to live on a reserve and led the battle of Little Big Horn. He was stabbed in the back, which is how his life ended prematurely. There is some discrepancy as to whether he was stabbed by one of his own or an opposing soldier. This project is currently being built and only the face of Crazy Horse is complete. If you want to learn a little more, here's the link: http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/

It's pretty cool to check out and see the progress from one man to a whole production helping to build it. At night they have a laser show projected on the side of the mountain. It's called Legends in Lights. We saw it and I have to say, it's no Disney park show but it was still pretty neat. Some of the images were a little hard to identify, but that could very well come from my limited knowledge of Native American artifacts. As I walked around I noticed that nothing was documented very well (this coming from my Anthropology/Archaeology minor background). Most of the artifacts they had on display, I am pleased to announce, were donated from families and direct lines to the tribes they belonged to, meaning they weren't discovered underground and therefore aren't really missing their documentations of where they are from. However, I did see some flakes and projectile points unlabeled :(

Tomorrow we head out to Yellowstone National Park, which is an 8 hour drive. We're going to stay there for a few hours and then head out to Butte, Montana. We will spend the night in Butte (no I have no idea what there is to do in Butte, it's just a random place I decided to see) and then head to our second to last stop after that. I am almost done with my road trip and I am EXHAUSTED!! I can't believe that people did this trek with horses and buggies. Keep checking back for my last few posts about my road trip and the future adventures I will experience. Until then... Laters