Rio Travelers: MOUNT RUSHMORE AREA

There are no words to describe the awesome sight of Mount Rushmore. This is the second time for us, personally, seeing the sculpture but it is still hard to imagine that one man had the ability to imagine and carry out such a job to pay tribute to four of our greatest presidents. And then, being there at night for the lighting and paying tribute to all our veterans by having them on stage for the evening "retiring of the colors". We have several vets in our group (including Ken) who went down to the stage and one of them, Ira Miller, who took part in the flag ceremony.

We also saw the Crazy Horse monument which is coming along at a very slow pace; but it is a private undertaking still run by the sculptor's family (Korczak Ziolkowski) so progress depends on donations and of course, entrance fees. The monument itself has not progressed much since our last visit in 2006 but the visitors center has wonderful displays of the Native American cultures, particularly the Lakota people and we were able to take a bus tour to the base of the monument.

We took a drive through Custer State Park where we saw a huge bison herd who were so used to car traffic that we had to wait for them to cross the road. You have to be respectful of something so big that it could do some serious damage to our little Honda CR-V.
We did a bus trip to tour the highlights of Rapid City - the second largest city in South Dakota with a population of about 70,000. The tour included a stop at a Black Hills gold factory where we all purchased "souvenirs". It was very interesting to learn how the jewelry is made and where it got its name. The gold is no longer mined here but it is more about the design. It will always have grapes and leaves in a two or three tone gold. It was originally designed by a French goldsmith who got lost in the Black Hills and dreamed about his homeland in France. That is how Black Hills gold was started. On our tour we stopped at the Journey Museum which told the history of South Dakota as well as a stop at the Chapel in the Hills. The chapel is an exact replica of a chapel (the Borgund Stavkirke) built in Norway in 1150. If we remember our history, this area has a very large Scandinavian population. The chapel is used for vespers on Tuesday evenings all summer long as well as for weddings. We also visited Bear Country USA. The pictures will tell the story.

The last set of pictures were taken by our guests, Darrell and Linda Marshall, who drove to the Wild Horse Sanctuary outside of Hot Spring, SD. They had a great visit and saw many wild and feral horses.