Saturday, July 21

Saturday: July 21

Drove 27 miles

Started out the day with a pancake breakfast outside in the tent at the Campground office and then went over to the campground stables for a trail ride. It was a wonderful ride through the Black Hills National Forest. My horse was named Snickers and was unusual in that it had blue eyes! Tim’s horse was named Nipper because it tends to nip at the rear of the horse in front of it.

After the horseback trail ride we changed out of our jeans into some shorts for a bike ride from the campground to Hill City, a little over 3 miles away, by way of the Mickelson Trail. This wonderful facility was built on the Burlington Northern Railway right of way and covers 108.8 miles from Deadwood to Edgemont, SD.

Once we arrived in town we visited art galleries and jewelry stores (had to have some of that Black Hills gold, you know) until our stomachs told us it was lunchtime. We picked the Hill City Café, a pretty rustic place to eat. When we came out, the temperature had climbed to 101 degrees!!! We walked on through town to where we had parked our bikes, passing a bank clock thermometer on the way. By the time we got the camera out of the back pack, the temperature had dropped to 100 degrees. Oh that's a relief! :-) We started the bike ride back to the campground only to find it was an uphill grade and we were riding into the wind. I pooped out a little over halfway back. I seriously thought I was going to have a heat stroke. Tim left me by the trail, went back and got the truck and came and rescued me. After an hour or so in the air conditioning in the trailer, we were both good as new and ready for our next adventure.

We gathered up Sprocket, the camera and a map and rode down Hwy 16 and 385 to the Crazy Horse Memorial. What a surprise! I wasn’t expecting anything but a carving on the mountain, something like the one at Stone Mountain, GA. Once we got there we found there was a large Native American Culture Museum. We toured it and watched a movie about the undertaking. The history was interesting. In 1939, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote a letter to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski (an assistant to Broglum at Mt. Rushmore) asking him to design a similar monument to honor Indian culture. Korczak worked on it from 1939 until his death in 1982. He left behind a wife and 10 children who are carrying on his mission to this day. The sculture differs from Mt. Rushmore in that it is entirely private enterprise financed - no governmenet money is accepted, and it is designed to be a 3 dimensional carving depicting the bare chested warrior charging out of the mountainside atop his galloping horse. When completed it will stand 56 stories high and be more than two football fields in length. So far it shows Crazy Horse's head and his arm pointing out over the Black Hills to capture the essence of his famous saying, "My lands are everywhere my people are buried."

Tonight we decided to be a little more authentic to the area so we grilled out – barbequed boneless chicken thighs and corn on the cob.

We had originally planned to leave tomorrow but there are so many things to do in this area of the country, we changed our plans and decided to stay another day. We love this place! Someday we’d like to come back and actually ride the length of the Mickelson Trail, maybe staying at one of the beautiful mountain lodges we passed on our driving through the country side.

(There are pictures of Crazy Horse Memorial that I'll add to diary next week. Running out of time...Tim's ready to head out!)

7/21/2007 : view on map : permalink
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