Crazy Horse & the Dead Presidents

There's something about sleeping in the middle of a hayfield that really makes you appreciate air conditioning, toilets with water in them, and running water.  We are riding what passes for state of the art motorcycles and living a low-tech life in the middle of a hayfield.  Our only concessions to technology are ten dollar Walmart lawn chairs and a cooler that keeps our water, pop, and my beer in a reasonable temperature range considering that the daytime temperatures since we arrived here have been north of 100 F. during the afternoons.  By 8 a.m. the temperature was already in the high seventies with nary a cloud to be seen.  It is great riding in this weather but the heat and wind literally sucks the moisture out of you.

We left reasonably early today for our ride to the Crazy Horse Memorial.  The ride to Deadwood was easy with hundreds of bikes on the road but everyone seems to be riding reasonably so there doesn't appear to have been any serious crashes this week. 

Turning south at Deadwood, we rode the fifty miles to the memorial through Hill City.  Most of the towns in this part of South Dakota have grown from their original beginnings but they have preserved their old buildings, which for the most part were built between 1890 and 1910.  And several of the towns we have ridden through have old rail grades that are now used as biking or hiking trails.  It amazes me, not only that the railways built lines to these little towns but up until about 30 years ago they were still in operation.

It seems that a large number of people who are at Sturgis had the same idea as we did because we saw literally thousands of Harleys either going to the Memorial or returning from it.  Every attraction has parking lots full of mostly Harleys with a smattering of Hondas and other metric bikes.  And people are spending money - lots of money on accessories for their machines or on clothing and patches for themselves.  Sturgis is one large open air market with the occasional saloon and bike display thrown in.  It's great! And the people are from everywhere in the US, Canada, Europe and I've met several from as far away as Australia, although I have no idea what possessed the bus load of Japanese tourists when they scheduled their visit to the Black Hills during Bike Week.



Crazy Horse Memorial from the entrance
 

Close up of the memorial
 

Garry with Crazy Horse in the background

The Memorial itself is impressive but when you consider that the family that runs the foundation that owns everything has been working on the memorial since 1948 and the only finished part of it is Crazy Horse's head, it looks like the family has several generations of employment ahead of it.  We saw several of the original sculptor's daughters at the restaurant and Korczak's wife, who is 86 now, is said to work at the complex every day.  The family has a wild 'free enterprise' philosophy and refuses to accept any government help, I suspect because it might mean giving over control of the monument to the government.  The Korczak (don't remember his last name, but it's Polish) and his wife had ten kids, seven of whom still work at the Crazy Horse Foundation which owns the mountain and one thousand acres of land around it.  The ultimate goal is to build a complex based on the North American Indian culture at the foot of the monument, but much like the medieval European cathedrals, it is a work that will span many gnerations and unless something changes drastically, it will be generations before it is complete.

Model of the finished memorial
 

Larger model of the finished memorial
 

Nature Gate at the Crazy Horse Memorial

After lunch we rode the twelve or so miles to Mount Rushmore which, if possible, is busier than the Crazy Horse Memorial.  The rock formations along the highway are incredible, and like many places we have ridden, they reach to the sky. Considering that it's an iconic American place and image, it shouldn't be too suprising.  The monument itself is quite impressive and the effort it must have taken the sculptor to do all of the work is incredible.  I overheard one gentleman wondering which was the first state to join the union.  I seem to recall that it was Delaware and mentioned that to him.  We all searched for the pillar of the first state, and sure enough, it was Delaware.
 

On the road to Mount Rushmore

More rocks!
 

And still more rocks!

Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, & Lincoln

Lincoln at Mt. Rushmore

We then rode back in to Rapid City and hit the air conditioning and wi-fi of Starbucks  so we could escape the heat even if momentarily, and I could do yesterday's blog.

On the way back to the Chip, We took the Piedmont exit in the hopes that Ron and Larry-o were still camping at the Elk Creek Campground where we had met last year.  Sure enough, they were so we stopped and visited with them for a good 45 minutes.  The live slightly more than 900 miles from here in southern Illinois, and planned to do about 700 miles on Thursday, and the remaining 200+ miles on Friday.  Larry-o is retired from Caterpillar tractor so he was OK about getting home.  Ron, if I recall correctly, is a truck driver and he has to be at work on Sunday night.  I really enjoyed camping with them last year and I'm sure Garry enjoyed meeting them as well.  They are great storytellers  and it was a great time just to sit with them and talk about riding and the other sorts of things that guys talk about when they're on their own.

Ron & Larry-o at the Elk Creek Campground

Tom & hen turkey at the campground

As we were chatting at tom turkey, a hen and four chicks strolled out along the fence enjoying the late afternoon sun.  The tom tried to cross the road and was almost smacked by a Jeep.  Fortuneately, he moved fast and the jeep driver hit the brakes in time so he escaped - this time.

The ride back to Sturgis was easy with a good amount of bike traffic but when we got to town we took some back streets and turned a 25-30 minute stop and go ordeal into a ten minute slow ride that was much easier on everyone concerned.  Once again on the way out Highway 34, a State Patrol officer had some poor sucker pulled over for some infraction.  Every time we have ridden the four miles from Sturgis to the Chip the police have had someone pulled over.  Sometimes more than one.

The entrance to the 'Chip' at sundown.

Tonight we got smart and took the shuttle to the Ampitheatre instead of walking.  The first act was Aaron Lewis from the band Staind.  He has a backup band and is the headliner.  His show was OK but not up to the standards of the past two nights.  The headliner for the night was a country singer named Eric Church.  He was OK if you are a fan, but it was pretty much a snoozefest for us so we left halfway through the show.  Both singers did their, 'It's great to be an American' thing and there's nothing wrong with that but it does get old.  It seems that their patriotism has morphed from being a beacon of light for the world into a patriotism that says, "We're the biggest baddest dog on the block and if you don't like it we'll kick your ass.' 

Aaron Lewis

Eric Church

The music being what it was, these two young ladies were the highlight of the evening for us.

My take on the 'freedom' that many of them espouse so strongly is that it is the freedom to shoot someone or get shot by them, and to go bankrupt and die after you have an illness that your insurance company won't pay for, that is, if you can get health insurance.  I love America but I think it has gotten twisted somehow by the greed heads whose attiude now seems to be, I've got mine, Jack so f--- you, instead of the more Christian  philosophy of being your brother's keeper.

Tonight I finally smartened up. I have these wonderful ear protectors that I use while I'm riding and it finally occurred to me to use them so I could get a good night's sleep without being awoken by loud bikes at 3 a.m.  Today was Day 3 in Sturgis and it has been a great time.  I haven't had a shower since Monday morning, but I'm in the same boat as a lot of other people here.  When I get to my first motel I'm going to have a very long shower.