Black Hills of South Dakota

Beatles Double White Album: "Somewhere in the Black Hills of Dakota lived a young boy called Rocky Racoon, and one day his woman run off with another guy......."

Well today somewhere in the Black Hills of Dakota rummbled the Finks. Finks woman stayed on the back. No running off.

We left alone today and headed for Crazy Horse Memorial. Good tip Paul. Genuis in fact. Most traffic was running towards us.

We both enjoyed visiting the memorial site. Its immensly impressive. Is it reasonable to have a slight concern if they will ever actually fiinsh it? Possibly.

It's the Native Americans "two finger salute" that "we too have heroes' in response to Mount Rushmore. Crazy Horse is the perfect subject matter. A Warrior who defeted Custer , never agreed to live in a reservation and was knifed in the back by a soldier.

Didnt run off with another guy but was in the Black Hills.

Vision of finished Crazy Horse Memorial.

Model of completed statue

How it will be cut out of the Mountan

School Bus takes you to the bottom of the Mountain

 Next we happened upon a lot of little towns. All great. Took some photos but didnt really stop. Sturgis casts such as shadow over the entire area they have t shirts etc dripping everywhere.

We rode into Custer State Park. Mark was especially keen on riding the "Needles Highway" While in the park but not yet on Needles we came across a very large bison on the road.

"Bison in the wild" a portrait of a Bison by Gerry Fink.

If you are a fan of Gerry's Wildlife photograhy she does have a book out. Send me your email address for further details.


Actually we did get a slightly better one. Perhaps Im being unfair.

Good sense of scale. We could have touched him as we rode by. 

We hit the Needles 5km after Custer. Just as we where about to hit the good part of the ride-THUNDER. HAIL.

We got a good drenching so pulled over to wait for it to pass.

Thats rain folks, not out of focus

Ok, so now Im pissed.

Mark gave his new rain jacket an earlier then expected workout and Gerry's Revit Jacket failed for the first time in 4 years. We can't complain its beeen our first time we had to fully tog up the whole trip.

10 to 15 minutes later it passed so onwards we went. The Needles were great. Tunnels. Views. Rocky outcrops and spears jutting upwards.

Mount Rushmore was only a short ride away. It seemed smaller than expected when we first got there but by the time we left a sense of the scale of it had dawned upon us. Crazy Horse will be so much bigger it may have uimpacted our impressions.

We headed back to Rapid City, found Gerry a water proof jacket and are spending the rest of day doing nessasary chores. This blog comes to you from a laundromat a substantial walk from our motel.

Gerry noticed some blue ribbons on the statues around the city. Reading the paper a Police Officer was murdered here doing a routine traffic stop a few days ago. Its hard to reconcile with the generous nature we encounter from the Americans. Every day people say "Welome to America", "Nice to meet you folks" or Do you like America? hope you have a great time"

Its a beautiful area here, you could spend a week or two just being and pottering about.

We have noticed that people are rather fond of Harleys here!!!! We filled up with gas this morning and the service station had a pin board asking bikers to show which state they lived in. It was marked with hudreds of pins from all over USA.  Gerry wrote New Zeland off to the side and put a pin it it.

Go Kiwi.

Anyway love to all and here are some examples of Womens safety apparel in South Dakota.

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