What a day! After a hearty breakfast of camp pancakes we drove to Wind Cave National Park, just down the road.
We went on the Natural Entrance tour (even though we didn’t enter through a natural entrance).
We walked through tunnel after tunnel... it reminded us of the labyrinth description in one of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books.
"Boxwork" is an interesting rock formation on the ceilings of the tunnels ...
... and this formation is called “popcorn”.
We went back to Custer State Park and after lunch we learned about the Gold Rush here in the Black Hills and did a little panning for gold ourselves.
The temperature rose to 97 degrees so we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in Legion Lake and relaxing on the beach (yes, you read that correctly, RELAXING on the beach!)
After an early dinner we drove to the Crazy Horse Memorial.
This is what it will look like... a prototype by the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who started work carving out this section of the Black Hills in 1948.
And this is how it looks now, a work of art still in progress by Korczak’s children (he passed away in 1982).
Kermit learning about Crazy Horse... he found out that the 4 heads from Mt. Rushmore would fit inside Crazy Horse’s head alone... that tells you the magnitude of this project.
We left Crazy Horse and arrived at Mt. Rushmore just in time to see the faces in the daylight...
... we stayed for the Lighting Ceremony which was very patriotic. Quite a day in So. Dakota!
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