Monday, Day 23, June 4, 2012

Good evening from Lusk, Wyoming. Got an early start from Gillette, Wyoming this morning. I was not impressed with the breakfast offering the motel had  and they were late in getting it set up. I drove a couple hours and found a nice place and had a very good breakfast.As I indicated I changed plans and went up to the Crazy Horse Memorial. It is just like Mt Rushmore and it memorializes Indian Chief Crazy Horse who under a flag of truce was stabbed to death by an army trooper. The sculptor started on the work in 1948 and he died in 1982. Since then his family working with the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board of Directors has continued the project. This is a total private funded operation with no state or federal funding help. They have turned down federal help a couple of times. I can understand why. They have a gold mine here and the federal government would screw things up. This has been the biggest disappointment of my trip. It cost $10.00 just to drive in and that lets you see the orientation center. To get close to the monument you have to take a bus for another fee. All in all it has turned out to be tourist trap so I left and the the one photo I took of the head off in the distance did not come out or I lost it.

Typical Granite mountains near Mt Rushmore

Main walk Way Entrance to Mt Rushmore

Memorial Viewed Through State Flags

One of Many Views of the Memorial

On the viewing terrace where all the gift shops, cafe, theater is a very large space with hundreds of people jocking around for a clear photo of the mountain or of themselves with the mountain behind them and just as you would suspect someone always walks in front of the camera. From this terrace 2 trails take you up and around the base of the mountain. One trail is .2 miles and is classed as basically flat. The other " The Presidential Trail " is classed as strenuous and .9 miles and I can't begin to tell you how many steps up and down. If there is any doubt I took the Presidential Trail.

Replica of Indian Village and Tee pee

The next few photographs were taken from different locations on The Presidential Trail.

You can see the vast amount of rock below the presidential heads. This is all from the blasting they did to get past the soft rock and down to the hard granite which they carved. They say that 90% of the memorial was done by blasting.  The workmen would climb hundreds of steps to the top of the heads. From there they would be lowered by man operated wenches to the level they wanted to work. They sat in a swing apperatice with a back to keep them from falling out. They used several different types of chisels in air operated drill to drill holes for the blasting and for the actual sculpturing. On the very top above the head they were working on sat a large model of the presidents head. They used a series of methods to show the carvers exactly where to carve and how much to take out. The only way I can describe it is to think of scribing a shape on a board you want to fit around or up against lets say a rock wall. They would blast in the afternoon for the next mornings work and blast during the lunch break for the afternoons carving. In the valley is a very large air compressor which supplied the air for operation of the drills and carving bits.  I can just image how many thousands of feet of air tubing they had to have and how in the world did they have connections that fit so tightly they did not loose air pressure. Interesting in all the years it took to complete this memorial not a single death was recorded. Just a lot of bumps and bruises.

After Mt Rushmore I went a few miles into Rapid City, South Dakota and found a Hyundai dealer. When I was in Kansas City I supervised a small office in Rapid City. It is a nice little town. Lady Blue's automated activities have been warning me that a scheduled maintance has not been performed so to keep her quiet I found the dealer and had the required maintenance accomplished. I think I am about 140 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming and then on to Denver and Colorado Springs. So I will say good night for now and will try to talk some more tomorrow night. I love you all. Grandpa Bill.