What a Rush!

We arrived at Hart Ranch Resort (http://www.hartranchresort.com/) in Rapid City, SD, on Tues., June 16, which is only about 20 min. from Mount Rushmore. Growing up I never imagined that I would one day actually visit this amazing monument. Oh, sure, I dreamed of traveling and seeing the world, but there was always a part of me that was sure I wouldn't venture far from St. Louis (boy, was I wrong!). And even though we’ve had this trip scheduled for almost a year, I still didn’t believe it until there we were standing on the grounds. Mount Rushmore National Memorial (http://www.nps.gov/moru) is truly awe inspiring on so many levels. Just the sheer size of it is amazing (though Russ says he thought it would be bigger :-). The forest surroundings of the Black Hills are beautiful. And the sheer artistry of the sculptures is incredible. There is no charge to visit Mount Rushmore, but the parking garage does charge $10 per car and it's good for one year.

We arrived just in time for the 30-minute ranger guided walk along the Presidential Trail. It was to begin at the Grand View Terrace, just on the other side of the Avenue of the Flags. There are 56 flags, (one for each state, 1 district, 3 territories, and 2 commonwealths), and everyone seems to take a photo of their state flag. We took one of each state where we have lived…8 in all. The Grand View Terrace is situated above the outdoor amphitheater and has the most incredible view of the sculptures. Ranger Deb facilitated the half mile walk, which takes you around the base of the mountain, winding through ponderosa pines and among blast fragments at the base of the monument to various points below the sculpture. At times you feel as if you are standing right under their noses. Along the way she shared stories about each president, why each was chosen, and facts about the making of Mount Rushmore.

- The particular granite of this mountain is extremely hard, and one of the amazing facts is it only erodes at the rate of 1 inch every 10,000 years!
- Rushmore is named after a New York City attorney who was sent out to the area in 1884 to check legal titles on properties. At the time the mountain was unnamed and when he kept pestering his guide for its name, the guide said from now on we'll call it Mount Rushmore.
- The faces of the four presidents tower 5,500 feet above sea level with each head about 60 feet tall (the average of a 6-story building!)
- Sculptor Gutzon Borglum with about 400 workers created this massive work of art between 1927 and 1941 primarily with the use of dynamite. After blasting, the features were shaped with air-powered hammers, drills, chisels, wedges, and regular hammers while the men were suspended by cables in swing seats with no hard hats thousands of feet in the air with no lives lost…amazing!

The walk ends at the Sculptor’s Studio that displays original tools and the scale model used. The scale is a 1:12 ratio (one inch equals one foot on the mountain), and shows the presidents as Borglum had originally intended but was unable to complete. As we left, traveling along Hwy. 44, we had an excellent view of George Washington’s profile. The detail in these sculptures is amazing especially when you consider the tools used to create them, and we can’t stress enough the beauty of the area.



Each night at 9pm during the summer an inspirational program is held at the outdoor amphitheater, and we chose to attend on our last night in town. It begins with a ranger talk followed by an interesting and patriotic film called “Freedom: America's Lasting Legacy”. After the film, the ranger recited a version of the Pledge of Allegiance as related by Red Skelton whose teacher had explained the pledge's meaning, word by word...very touching. She then asked all past and present military personnel to come down onstage so we could honor them and finish out the program. About 150 -2 00 people joined her onstage and after all of us recited the Pledge of Allegiance, a boy scout troop from Colorado assisted with the lowering and folding of the flag. And now it was time for the memorial to be lit making it even more awe inspiring than during the day. To conclude the program, the ranger, holding the folded flag, asked each person onstage to come up, touch the flag, and tell us his/her name and branch of service. The entire program was moving and left you feeling with a real sense of pride and patriotism.




Another place we visited while in the area was the Crazy Horse Memorial (http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/) located about 20 miles from Mount Rushmore. It is not part of the national park service and receives no federal or state monies but is a non-profit relying on the $10 per person entry fee and proceeds from its shops for funding. In fact the sculptor was twice offered $10,000,000 in federal funding that he turned down because he was such a strong believer in the free enterprise system and felt the project should be built by the interested public and not the taxpayers. However, admission is always free for Native Americans, military personnel with active-duty ID, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops in uniform, and Custer County, SD residents. One of their current fundraisers is their 4th annual bike raffle, a Harley Davidson Street-Glide with one-of-a-kind artwork in honor of Korczak’s 100th birthday. Tickets are $20 each or 3 for $50, but we didn’t buy any.

In 1939 Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote to Korczak Ziolkowski commissioning him to consider carving a giant sculpture of Crazy Horse. He said he “would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.” The first blast was done in June 1948 and 50 years later, in 1998, the face was completed and dedicated. But this monument is far from finished. The picture on the left shows the finished monument drawn over the granite and several statistics are listed below. Korczak died in 1982, and knowing this project was bigger than any one person’s lifetime, he left detailed plans for his family. Korczak’s wife and 7 of their 10 children remain involved with the project and were featured in the orientation film viewed at the welcome center. The head alone is 87-1/2 feet tall (the average of a 9-story building), and it was noted in the film that the entire Mount Rushmore monument would fit inside Crazy Horse’s head! When completed, the monument will showcase Crazy Horse astride his horse left arm thrust forwarding pointing towards his sacred lands. The entire monument will be 641 feet long by 563 feet high. They are currently working on the horse’s head which is 219 feet or 22 stories high! You can see in the photo where they have outlined part of the head.

The 40,000-square-foot welcome center showcases many of the tools being used, paintings, photos, Korczak’s studio home, an American Indian museum, gift shop, restaurant, and so many opportunities to spend money to help fund the project including the opportunity to have a rock that was blasted from the mountain for a donation. (OK, we did pick up a small one of these and donated a dollar.) On the outdoor deck is a 1/34the scale model of the finished project (You can see me standing next to it in the photo above). Below are two photos displayed on the wall we found interesting. On the left is how the mountain looked in 1948 before the first blast and on the right is one taken in 2008 under construction.










In the parking lot area is a 9’6” bronze sculpture of the Fighting Stallions and a beautiful (and aptly named) Black Hills Nature Gates. The Gates are 46 feet long and have 270 brass silhouettes of birds and animals. The entire project is mind boggling and incredible but well worth seeing. No idea when they’ll ever get it completed.

After leaving there we stopped for lunch at the Wrangler Café in Custer, at an elevation of 5,600 feet it’s considered to be the oldest established town in the Black Hills. I tried my first ever buffalo burger that quite frankly tasted like a regular hamburger. It was rather well done so that might have had something to do with it. We later learned that the café had reopened just a week earlier after having been burned down. Food was okay, but it’s more the experience of eating in some of these small town restaurants. Scattered around town were several painted fiberglass bison decorating the landscape.



Though Hart Ranch is a membership resort, they are very welcoming to those of us who can only stay a week or so. To all of our RV friends, we’d highly recommend this campground/resort. There’s lots to do, plenty of activities, and everyone we met during our 7 days there was extremely friendly and helpful plus the sites are nice and big. The park is divided into two sections…those who have dogs and those who don’t. The section for those with dogs has large pet walking areas behind some of the back-in spaces and there’s also a huge off-leash area at one end of the section. We had one of the back-in sites so there was plenty of walking room behind us. Recently we had purchased a new flagpole that attaches to the ladder on the back of the RV and now we proudly display our flag even at night since we also purchased a small light to shine on it. Don’t have a picture of it flying at night yet but hope to get a decent one soon.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the fun things about traveling is visiting various Sweet Adelines choruses. I had found that there was a mid-size chorus in Rapid City that rehearsed on Tues. nights, but since that was the day we were arriving in town, I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to their rehearsal. But as I perused their website I discovered that they would be performing at Hart Ranch on Fri. After a really nice prime rib dinner special in the resort’s restaurant, we found seats in the pavilion and waited for A Cappella Showcase Chorus (http://acshowcase.org/). About 25 of their members made the performance directed by Judy Duval, who has been their director since 1984. New Year’s Eve they performed as guests of the Black Hills Symphony Orchestra for their “Lullaby of Broadway” concert and most of the songs they performed for us were Broadway tunes. They were very entertaining, and towards the end they asked if there were any Sweet Adelines in the audience. Naturally I raised my hand, and after an introduction, they asked me to join them as they taught the audience the 4-part harmony for “When the Saints Go Marching In”. What fun to sing with them! I sat back down, and a couple songs later, I was invited back up to sing their last song, one which is known by all Sweet Adelines around the world, "Tomorrow’s Another Day". As Russ told Judy afterwards, they made my week.