RN: Rapid City SD! Didn’t know what to expect, but after lunch we explore downtown and it has shined itself up with statues of presidents on every corner and a Main Street Square complete with a fountain that changes its patterns and rhythms. As you can see, Dr. Felix is quite impressed 🙂

In addition to presidents, Native Americans are honored…

We start heading for Mount Rushmore, and we’re not the only ones going there…

According to Wiki, the idea of carving up Mount Rushmore was hatched by a historian for South Dakota who wanted figures like Lewis and Clark, Sacajawea, Crazy Horse, and Red Cloud. He hired a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum who chose 4 presidents instead (Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln) to honor American birth, growth, development, and preservation. Virtually all (90%) of the carving was done with dynamite between 1927-1941 with a large team of artists who faithfully reproduced Borglum’s plaster model.

Nearby is a carving of Crazy Horse that was started in 1970 by one of the artists who helped sculpt the presidents on Mt Rushmore. The face was completed in 1998, and the pointing hand completed in 2009. Work is now proceeding on the horse.

This is what the completed sculpture will look like. When it is done, it will be the largest in the world.

FE. The name of the original sculptor is Korczak Ziolkowski…guess you need a funky name to be a large scale artiste. In the associated museum I found an art form I had not seen before, cast paper sculpture, here is a Lakota Dancer by Patty Eckman, truly impressive detail.

But now the fun begins, we proceed to the Needles drive in Custer State Park. It is truly wild, wooly and wiggly (also called W3 driving).

More great rocks, but note the tiny people watching two white spots below….what might they be?

Wow, we approach and here is Mama Mountain Goat with her Goatlet

Credit to Rae for the photo below…I know how much patience it took to get….I deleted many tries from my phone!

Yep…my favored way to travel in the video below

Remember W3 driving?

We go steeply downhill for so long, that we generate much electrons…for you non-Teslarati, here we drove for 3 miles and generated 546 Watts…and calculating from the odometer we have driven about 11,500 miles since leaving home!

We end the day by having a fine Nepalese dinner and hanging out in the bar of our hotel where we are serenaded by local talent. A full day for us!