Above the Wind Cave


Wind Cave National Park is not all underground and the tourists have not figured it out…good for us.  We hiked Wind Cave Canyon today…and never saw a sole!  From what we understand, the cave complex was directly below us as we followed the canyon to the Park Boundary.  It was an odd feeling to know that caves existed 100’s of feet below us for the entire hike.  It was also pretty good bird watching…and bloody hot!  By the time that we returned to the parking area, it was a humid 31 degrees.  It changed our plans for the afternoon, and we are lucky that it did…we would have been ‘drowned rats’.

We decided to head over to Crazy Horse Memorial instead.  Crazy Horse Memorial is the Native American’s answer to Mount Rushmore.  If you can do it, we can do it better!  Crazy Horse was a Lakota leader who refused to ever sign a treaty with the ‘white man’.  This is a tribute to the North American Indians to show that, “the red man has great heroes also”…and we will build ours even bigger.  The face of Crazy Horse stands 87.5 feet high, the faces of the Presidents are a mere 60 feet.  When this memorial is completed, it will have Crazy Horse sitting upon his steed.  It will stand 563 feet high…if it is ever completed!  It was begun in 1948…not liking the odds that our generation will see much more than the face!

On our return from Crazy Horse we drove into a rainstorm of ‘epic’ proportions.  As we entered the town of Custer the nasty looking skies opened up.  This was kind of funny considering that the town of Custer is the southern terminus for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.  The main street was lined with bikes…down the middle I might add…their owners were scrambling to dig out their rain gear…they were definitely going to be too late.  Even the best rain gear that money can buy was not going to be of much use…it was raining that hard…kind of funny from our perspective as we slowly drove through the rainstorm in our dry pickup!

Distance Traveled = 148 km.  Wildlife Sightings =Bison, Pronghorns, Common Night Hawk, Magpie, Meadowlark, Eastern Kingbird, Townsends Solitaire, Flicker, Goldfinch, Black-capped Chickadee, Indigo Bunting, Yellow-breasted Chat, Spotted Towhee, Common Yellow Throat Warbler, Turkey Vulture, Mourning Dove, Rock Dove, Rock Wren.


Crazy Horse...a work in progress


Canyon Wall


Worn limestone walls


A man on a mission!


Bikers about to get wet!


A storm about to hit



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