As we came down a hill 10 minutes from our campground, we saw a scenic turnoff and pulled into it to see what the view was of. Reading the description, we turned around and saw George Washington in profile up behind us! What a surprise! We proceed on down the mountain, then up the other side into the large and professional parking lot, and pulled into the RV parking area. We were among the first arrivals of the day, and walked up to the monument through a most impressive entrance with flags from all 50 states. The complex is run by the Xantarra Corp, the same folks who have done such a great job with the Grand Canyon railroad and train.
Mount Rushmore is awesome, in the original sense of the word. It took 14 years to build it, and started under Calvin Coolidge and ended under Franklin Roosevelt. Gutzon Borglum was the designer, architect and builder, and his studio is still available for tours at the site (though it wasn't open that morning).
Becky and Jim walked the 3/4 mile Presidential Trail to catch and see all the views, and it's quite exhausting! Over 240 steps back up to the top if you go to the bottom where the hydraulic power station was. This picture is of Becky filming the monument from that location (she took quite a few beautiful movies of the site). We purchased some postcards and souvenirs, and decided to move on--too many things to see!
Our plan for the day was to drive through the Badlands, into Nebraska for a short visit, and then return via the Custer Park and the Crazy Horse memorial that is being carved on the backside of Mt. Rushmore.
There is a choice of two routes through the Badlands National Park, the South being jointly run by the US National Park Service and the Oglala Lakota Sioux. The Northern sector, basically to the east, is National Park Service. We unfortunately took the southern route, primarily through the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Unlike the photos that show fantastic mountain and valley views, the southern route goes through truly ugly and useless bad lands. Wind and rain over the centuries has eroded much of the land, and one can see why it's essentially good for nothing! That's probably why the US government gave it to the indians! There is a Ranger and information station along the route, but it doesn't open until May. We pulled into the parking lot to give the dogs some exercise and eat lunch, and found a sign depicting how a good portion of this land actually had been put to some use by the US government. During World War II, on short notice, the government decided it needed a third of a million acres of the reservation for aerial bombing practice! Many residents had to move out on short notice, some never to return.
After leaving the Park area itself, we drove for many miles through the reservation. It is really tragic to see how so many of the native Americans live, not just here but on several of the reservations we drove through. The common homestead is a beat up mobile home, used 5th wheel RV, or a small house. The yards are generally filled with cars, trucks, buses and/or RV's, of which at least 50% of all we saw were rusting junk. The yards are generally filled with trash, scrap metal, and lots of paper. To see any kind of landscaping or flowers is an extreme rarity. And it's consistently like this, even in the areas where farming or raising cattle is possible.
We wanted to get to the site of the Wounded Knee river massacre site. On 12/28/1890, Chief Big Foot of the Sioux had surrendered to the Army and were escorted to a site on the river, where they camped. The next day, 470 troopers of the 7th Cavalry (of Lt Col George Custer fame) surrounded the 350 Sioux warriors, women and children and mounted cannon on the hill overlooking them. Someone, no one knows exactly whom, fired a shot and the Cavalry opened fire, killing a majority of the Indians. This was the last major military action taken by the US government against the native American tribes.
We got to the site, which is basically a large muddy parking lot now with this large sign depicted here. The other side of the sign, which is defaced even more, tells the second half of the story related here. As we were reading it, an American Indian man drove up and started talking about how the small souvenir shop across the street was still closed for the winter, but he had some "dream catchers" made by some of his students who were traditional indian singers, and they were raising money to go east to perform at some event. We of course bought one. He pointed out the gravesite on the steep hill opposite the parking lot, which our RV wouldn't have been able to traverse, and thanked us. It was really sobering being at the site and thinking what has happened over our country's history.
Moving along, we drove into the tribal town of Pine Ridge, and stopped for diesel fuel. As Jim was fueling, two teenage girls came up with locally made jewelry and asked if we had "been to the massacre site", and wanted us to buy some. We declined. The local school had just let out, and there were a lot of folks walking around, and boy did we stick out as tourists from another planet!
Just south of Pine Ridge we crossed into Nebraska, at a town called "White Clay". If we thought life on the reservation was bad, it looked great compared to this unbelievable shanty town. The buildings were decrepit, the natives lounging around all looked inebriated, we saw two men fighting rather ferociously. Really tough to see how badly some people have to live, and how fortunate we are.
We drove through Nebraska for about 40 or 50 miles, farm after farm after farm, all of it in much better shape than anything we had seen recently in South Dakota. Pretty boring, actually.
As we ended up the day driving nearly 300 miles, and all four of us getting pretty tired, we didn't stop in Custer state park or at the Crazy Horse memorial. We got back at 4:30, the campground office was closed (though the "open" lights were on!), so we went grocery shopping. Came back, still no proprietor, so we camped for the night - one of three RV's in the campground.
Pretty exhausing day, and very educational!
It was a pretty boring ride overall, and we were glad to have our audible book on tape entertaining us. We did get several quick views of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which was nice--surprisingly wider than Jim had imagined.
