As you can see, there are many days piled together here. It has been a while since we have had any wireless coverage.
We made it to Crawford, NE on Tuesday evening and let me just say that the SE corner of Wyoming AND the NW corner of Nebraska AND the SW corner of South Dakota are very VAST and lonesome. A farmer there could see his dog running away from home for two days!
Dan and I decided that we were TOO close to Sturgis to pass it up. It is the 70th anniversary of the Sturgis, S.D. motorcycle rally and we have never been......SO.......we drove north through the Black Hills. And before I describe the debauchery of the Sturgis rally, let me describe the "honorable" mentions:
First, the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills:
Crazy Horse was a chief strategist for the Indians in the battle of the Little Big Horn (Custer's Battle). He was a revered elder in the Lakota tribe and was killed, stabbed in the back by a U.S. soldier, while under a flag of truce. Chief Henry Standing Bear wanted the "white man to know that the red man has great heros, also" so they hired a Polish-American named Korezak Ziolkowski to carve a sculpture of Crazy Horse beginning in 1948. He spent his life and his fortune to fulfill that commitment.
The sculpture is only partially finished and the entire project will be much larger than the faces of the presidents at Mt. Rushmore and much bigger even than the Sphinx sculpture in Egypt. And this is what Dan and I really loved......Korezak refused government money several times to the tune of tens of millions of dollars because he believed in free enterprise and knew that if the government funded any part of the monument he would lose control and it may never be completed.
His widow and his 10 children continue the project today with private funds. If you ever are near Rapid City, go see the Crazy Horse monument (oh, yeah, and also that little one.....Mt. Rushmore) (I know, Glenn, that you LOVE George Washington, so I will include a nice little photo of him that I took....profile...as we zipped past Rushmore)
Second, the "traveling" war memorial:
Dan and I had heard about the Buffalo Chip campground in Sturgis so we headed there in the late evening as we made our way (slowly) through the throngs of motorcycle traffic. From a half mile away we could see the GIANT American flag waving in the breeze and there at the entrance to the campground were hundreds of smaller American flags planted in rows and rows. Historical photos and placards were there representing wars from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, as well as names of the victims from 9/11 to the Ft. Hood massacre. Frankly, it was about the only thing "honorable" that we could find in Sturgis. (more on that later)
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