It's About the (RV) Journey....: You never know what you'll see....or won't see.....

I try to have the camera ready since you never know what you'll see when driving through this area. Even on the outskirts of the parks....

the longhorns again on a ranch outside Custer State Park

these guys are huge

taking a dainty sip

turkeys at the horse farm

one of the campgrounds in the park

there were several buffalo walking through

We started out to visit Crazy Horse Memorial and Jewel Cave National Monument on a fine looking morning, however, by the time we got to Crazy Horse, it was totally fogged in. Due to the bad weather, our tickets were half price and we were given a pass to return for free within the next 3 days. We took a chance, hoping the fog would lift, as the weather was fine when we left our campground. For more information on Crazy Horse Memorial, click here.

fog...ugh!

There is a lot more to the Memorial than the mountain carving though, so we took full advantage and explored the Indian Museum of North America, the Sculptor's workshop and the Cultural Center. There was an introductory movie as well, which was done well.

North American Indian museum

yup....why?

original rock

small scale model

lots of different displays in the museum

love the detail

wall hangings

teepee display

weaving corner

these are all beads!! so many and so many colors

Tom is intrigued with the horse decorations

The fog hadn't lifted yet, but we thought it might be getting brighter, so we decided to eat lunch at the Laughing Water restaurant, right there at the site. One of our fellow campers worked there last summer and gave it good reviews. He was right, we enjoyed it!

Crazy Horse Memorial?? Where??

another model...all we could see this day

Afterwards, we looked out and it was still fogged in. Ugh! An announcement was made that there would be blasting, so we thought we'd "see" something. No...we didn't. We just heard "fire in the hole", a loud explosion, and that was it. We'll have to go back in nicer weather!! But we did enjoy the museums.

Korczak's studio (the sculptor)

the studio

arrowheads in the museum

the gate was awesome!

Giant Dreamcatcher...says Never Forget Your Dreams

good advice on the t-shirt!

Disappointed, we headed out to Jewel Cave National Monument. For more information, click here. There are cave tours offered, and we figured that would not be affected by the weather. I guess everyone else had the same thought. There was a 3 hour wait for the next tour. We decided to call it a day, since severe weather was expected again late in the day and we wanted to be home.

In 2000, a wildfire burned 90% of the trees on the land area of Jewel Cave. Evidence of this fire is still everywhere. The forest floor is green again, but the tree damage is huge.

popular place!

Visitor Center

14 years after the forest fire!

14 years!

Again, you never know what you will see so its best to have the camera ready! On the way home, we drove through Custer State Park Wildlife Loop again....and this is some of what we saw.

turkey vulture

just hanging out

buffalo jam

surprised to see babies in the jam!

aawww

burrows grazing

cute

more birds-chilling out

young guy

What a difference a day makes! We really wanted to see Crazy Horse, so as crazy as it sounds, we got up and out early to re-visit the memorial. The morning was bright, clear and full of sunshine. Severe weather again expected in the afternoon! What's up with that?

Now I see it!

It really is there!

a closer look

A lot of progress is being made on the monument, though there is still much to do. You can see the work being done in some of these pictures. This monument is also enormous. Mount Rushmore can fit into the head area of Crazy Horse. Mr. Korczak, the scultpor, died in 1982, but 7 of his 10 kids are involved in finishing this work. Mrs. Korczak had taken over "running" the operation, both the work on the monument, and running the visitor center (and museums). She passed away just about a week ago (May 27th), and there were a ton of flowers and tributes to her throughout the museum.

you can see some of the workers on the right...(enlarge photo)

and a few tractors

After a few minutes of searching the rocks for Mountain goats, which we didn't see, we meandered back. Supposedly the mountain goats aren't bothered by the sound of blasting, and still are on the mountain. We didn't see any. (Were they making that up? hahaha)

this is the fastest visit ever at Crazy Horse! 10 minutes or so!!

We had a great lunch here!

On the drive back to the campground, we came around the other side of Mt. Rushmore, and caught another nice view of George Washington. We also drove through Keystone, and since it was daylight, I took some pics of the town as we drove through. You can see it is quite a vacation spot, with something for everyone to enjoy.