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G’day Mate, throw another shrimp on the Bar-B!!!  (That was a shout out, if it’s for you then you know who that’s for.)

After Leaving Winnipeg I headed south towards the U.S. Border.  When I got to the border crossing there was a crotchety old man sitting there from the US Customs office. He is definitely not as nice as the Canadian people.  He asks, “anything to declare?”  I declare that I love Canada.  Nothing.  “Did you buy anything while in Canada?”  Yes, gas, food and many hookers.  Still not even a smile.  “Do you have any fruit, vegetables or plants?”  Umm, no.  So he tells me to open the trunk, he looks inside and closes it.  Then he hands me back my drivers license and without even ‘a have a nice day‘ says, “you can go.”

Um, OK.  I have a huge cargo carrier on the roof and he doesn’t so much as ask me to open it.  Which is great for me, cause that’s where I was hiding that Canadian I promised I would bring back for you.  I can’t even begin to imagine what the import tax on one of those would have been.

I drove South on I 29 towards Fargo.  This part of the country is full of Corn Fields.

This is apparently a big Ethanol producing area. They have billboards everywhere and their gas is advertised to have 10% Ethanol.  It killed my gas mileage.  Regular gas gives me an average of 25.6 Miles per gallon.  With Ethanol it was 23.4 MPG.  It was that way through all of North Dakota.

I got to Fargo and drove around a bit.

Of course the first thing I had to do when I got to Fargo was check and see if they have one, and sure enough they do.  Actually they had 2

All’s Well that ends Wells Fargo.  (I know, I’m a Dork)

It seemed that the place to be in Fargo was the Dairy Queen.  The line was around the block

Being that Fargo was so non-descriptive, I could see why this business was there

And who could say it better?  That’s what I would call my place if I lived in Fargo. Fargo must have a high suicde rate

Before I left I stopped for a bit of food poisoning at Mom’s, which was in the same building as Pop’s, and Tailgators was in fact on the back of the building

I stopped at Fargo primarily because I saw the movie Fargo and I wanted to see if they spoke that way.  They do.  Time to go.

I set the GPS for Rapid City, South Dakota and I was off.  It got dark pretty soon after and it was back to driving 65 MPH on a dark road with 1 lane in each direction and no street lights.  As scary as that was then you now have Tumbleweeds to deal with.  They come flying out of nowhere and scare the crap out of you.  I figured I would be going 29 South towards Sioux Falls and then West to Rapid City.  That’s all major highway according to my map.  About an hour into the darkness I see a sign that says Bismark 66 miles.  Oh crap, that’s not right.  According to the GPS this is faster.  The problem is that it’s all back woods roads out in nowhere.  After a while of cheating death I finally had enough and around 1:00 AM I stopped in a parking lot and went to sleep.

I woke up at sunrise and continued on my way.  This area has some farms and nice rolling hills, but very little else

There was a bridge to nowhere, that connected 2 grass fields.

I always figured cows could go up and down hills, but I guess not.

Then I ran across the “Town” of Cottonwood

I could not figure out how this could even justify a sign. 12 people, what is that, 3, 4 homes?  That’s not even a subdivision, it’s a small street.  I continued to follow along when my GPS said to turn left on Big Foot Pass.

Being that I have no idea where I am, of course I turn, and this is the road

Are you kidding me? This is the fastest route?  Whatever, I go tearing down this dirt road and 5 miles later I’m on I-90.  Pretty soon the Signs were everywhere

And then I hit the road I was looking for

The funny thing about Mt. Rushmore Road is that Mt. Rushmore isn’t anywhere near that road. You gotta go Right to highway 16 and then drive 22 miles.  Then you wind through the mountains and come around a curve, and as you happen to look up in this mountain in front of you

It’s just breathtaking.  It blew me away.  And that wasn’t even the best view.

When you go up to the actual park you park and you can see the monument even better.  And as you get closer and closer it becomes more and more amazing.  I was awestruck.  It truly is a humbling experience to be standing the base of this thing and to see the amount of work that it must have took to accomplish this amazing piece of art.

I walked around the park trails and took pictures from all kinds of angles.  It was really inspiring.

The history behind it is great as well. In the sculptors studio you see his final mock up of the original design made in 1936 by the artist Gutzon Borglum.

The bottom part was not included because of variation in the rock formation

There is some incredible history behind this monument.  And something that you may not realize, besides the fact that it was supposed to have a lower half, is that there is a vault located behind the head of Lincoln.  It was originally intended by Borglum to be something like 180′ deep.  It was to contain historical documents of the US, such as copies of the bill of rights and the Constitution.  It was supposed to have the history of the US as well as busts of important people and other items of historical importance and then it was to be sealed behind glass.  It was only dug to 70′ when it had to be abandoned because the government didn’t want Borglum to spend any more money and direct his efforts to finish the sculptures.  In 1998 they placed some ceramic plaques that had the histories of the 4 presidents as well as Borglum and sealed off.

After leaving the park I came across some mountain goats

Then I went on down the road 18 miles to Crazy Horse.  For those that don’t know it’s a carving of a mountain that was started by Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1948.  It’s a monument of Crazy Horse on his horse.  When Completed it will be the worlds largest sculpture.  The faces of Rushmore are each 60 feet tall. The face of Crazy Horse is 87 feet tall.  It’s expected to be done in another 60 years, but it does not have a schedule finish date.

The artist

died in 1982 but work continues and it continues to be a non profit build. Korczak twice refused federal funding.  It’s incredible.  During the building of Rushmore they removed just under 500,000 lbs of rubble.  So far they’ve removed over 10 million pounds away.  The sheer size is impressive.  The fact that I may never live long enough to see it finished is mind boggling.  Anyone with young children should take them to have a picture taken there so they can show their kids and grand kids that there were there while history was made.  Here are mine

To give you an understanding of size, here is the same picture with the pickup pointed out.

And even that doesn’t really give a proper sense of size.

If you EVER have the opportunity in this lifetime, you must check out these 2 works of art.  You will not only be overwhelmed by their majesty, you will realize how small you are in the world.  But you also realize how one person can leave an everlasting mark on the planet.  You just have to live by Korczak Ziolkowski motto:

“Never Forget Your Dreams”

Check out their Website

http://www.crazyhorse.org/index.shtml

And Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial

I then went back to the small town at the base of Mt. Rushmore park and had some dinner and did a bit of shopping.

I said Hi to a cute pommie

I love those dogs.  I went through the tunnel

Enjoyed the Sunset

and headed on to Wyoming.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT WYOMING

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