June 11-12 - 2018 Custer, South Dakota

We are now in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Monday, the 11th, we moved 300 miles / 480 km from Medora to Custer, South Dakota.

A trip across the prairie with endless roads and very few cars.

 

Signs of the modern time gold rush in North Dakota: Oil

The Black Hills is where it all began. The idea of a road trip around the US.
In 1995 – 23 years ago – we went on a trip to the Black Hills with our friends Scott and Cindy in Minnesota. One night at the campground, an older couple (probably not as old as we are now 😊), pulled into the site right next to us in a small van (varevogn). They fixed their supper (aftensmad) from the back of the van, and when we got up the next morning they were gone. We looked at each other and said, that when we retire (går på pension) we will travel around the US just like that.
We stuck to (holdt fast i) our dream (with a few modifications – a bigger living space with a few conveniences – like toilet and refrigerator😊) and are now back where it all began and almost at the end of a 7-month journey on the road.

Tuesday, the 12th, we went to Mount Rushmore.

In 1923 a historian from South Dakota, Doane Robinson, got the (crazy) idea of carving (udskære/hugge) images of famous people like Lewis, Clark, Buffalo Bill etc. into the mountains of the Black Hills. The purpose (formålet) was to attract tourists to South Dakota.
By 1927 the project was a reality. To head the project sculptor Gutzon Borglum was hired (the son of Danish emigrants - Børglum is a small village, 30 miles north of Aalborg).


Avenue of flags (all state flags)

Borglum decided, instead though, to put four important presidents up on the mountain.

George Washington:  For being the father of the nation.
Thomas Jefferson:     For expanding the nation (The Louisiana Purchase)
                               (USA købte alt mellem Mississippi og Rocky Mountains af Frankring)
Abraham Lincoln:      For holding the nation together (den amerikanske borgerkrig)
Theodore Roosevelt:  For the development of the US. The Panama canal, conservation etc.
                               He was also a friend of Borglum which may have played a role. 😊

It is an amazing sight (even though we had seen it before). The heads are huge. Every face is about 60 feet (18 meter) high. The noses are about 20 feet (6 meter).  400 people worked on the project from 1927 to 1941. 400,000 tons of rock was blasted (sprængt) off the mountain. They became so good at using dynamite that they could get within inches (tommer) of where they wanted to be (90% of the carving was done by the use of dynamite).

 

 
I will be back when they put Ronald Reagan up there next to the other important presidents 😊.
 
From our campsite we have a clear view of another big sculpture project on a mountain: Crazy Horse Memorial. Crazy Horse was a Sioux Indian warrior (a leader in the battle at Little Big Horn (Custer’s last stand)). When Borglum started his project on Mt. Rushmore the Indian leaders wanted Crazy Horse up there too, next to the presidents. The request was turned down. In 1947 one of Borglum’s assistants was hired to lead the Crazy Horse project. It will be the largest mountain carving in the world. If it is ever finished!

Seems to me it will be the La Sagrada Familia of South Dakota. We went there in 1995 and from what I can see from the campground it looks now, almost like it did then!

Written by JJ