Crazy Horse Memorial

 We left the Badlands and headed west...things started looking a little more like home here...trees and hills...I like this area...

 We checked into our hotel in Rapid City where we would stay for 3-4 days...so glad to be in one spot for a while! Since we gained an hour because we are now in Mountain Time...we thought we could take a trip out to The Crazy Horse Memorial...

 I was so excited when we arrived...I have been looking forward to this part of the journey for so long! As soon as we arrived at the memorial...we were instructed to see a movie about the building of the memorial...it was very interesting...we learned so much from that short film...I want to tell you a little about it before I show you more...Crazy Horse Monument is on private land in the Black Hills...when completed...which probably won't be in my lifetime...it will depict Crazy Horse...a Lakota warrior...the area is sacred to the Lakota tribe and the memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear who was a Lakota elder. It was to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolowski...a well know sculptor from Boston...who also worked on Mount Rushmore...

 This is what you see from the museum area...they are now working on the arm and hand...and you can see the painted outline of the horses head...

 Here is the original bronze...and what the monument will look like when complete...

 I took this picture from inside the museum...it is all windows at the back...I tried to get both the bronze and actual monument in...

 You can take a bus ride up pretty close...but not too close...on any given day you can see people working...the face was completed in 1998...16 years after Korczak's death...for the first five years...he worked alone...going up and down a make shift ladder carrying heavy drills and sticks of dynamite with him...I was really impressed with the whole story...but I think what really impressed me most was that all the money raised to build this comes from private donations...as per Korczak's request...the federal government has offered money...but it has always been turned down...his wife and 7 of his 10 children took over the work...

 Here is a plaster statue that sits outside...the actual monument in the background...everything is perfectly to scale...it amazed me!

 The memorial is quite large too...more than 4 times that of nearby Mount Rushmore when complete...it is to be the center of a cultural center and one day have a satellite campus of University of South Dakota thanks to large private donations and lots of small ones...there are however lots of controversies over the building of the monument....

This was from a picture showing how large the monument will be...I had read many books and studied the history of the area before coming here...there is so much to learned in this area...and such a beautiful place to see...I feel grateful that I was given a chance to finally get to this place...I will remember this day forever...

Until next time...enjoy your day!!!