Day 12, September 11, 2019 -- Northwest Mountains Expedition

Day 12, September 11, 2019 – The Black Hills

Iron Star by John Lopez

Well, the weather did not cooperate with us today.  We started out toward the Wind Cave with a stop in Hill City.  Here we enjoyed the creative scrap metal art sculpture of John Lopez’s Iron Star.  I’m not normally a fan of scrap metal art, but this horse is really a beautiful masterpiece of infused scrap with bronze pieces, barbed wire, chain links, tools which include a fork and shovel, silverware, etc.  And within the sculpture itself are five artfully placed equine bronze sculptures and a man’s face. And then there’s a colt with its beautiful mane of nails plus wrenches, silverware, etc.  Both pieces are quite amazing.

Needles Highway

The Needle

After a bit of shopping, we decided that because it’s not raining, we might be able to see Mount Rushmore even though the clouds are very low.  So we drove the beautiful windy road up the mountain, only to find that above 5,000 feet the visibility was nill!  Being flexible, Plan C was to drive through the Needles Highway, hoping that, by the time we get to the top, the clouds will have lifted a bit.  Unfortunately, they lifted very little. We were able to observe the narrow tunnel (8 feet wide, 10 feet 10 inches tall carved through a rock formation at 6,200 feet above sea level) and the giant needle-like columns at the peak; but as we twisted and turned both up and down the mountain, clouds prevented us from enjoying the beautiful vistas of the area that I know exist! 

Now we are at Plan D – It’s just, just starting to rain; we head toward the Crazy Horse Memorial to get a glimpse of the work being done. This massive project has been undertaken to preserve the culture, tradition and living heritage of all North American Indians.  While they have been working on the gigantic carving on the side of the mountain of Crazy Horse galloping on his horse for about

Crazy Horse Carving taken in the rain!

50 years, there is still a lot of carving to be done.  This is a privately sustained project with money coming from admissions and donations to the Memorial.  It certainly is an ambitious project and should be amazing when it is completed. Unfortunately, once again the clouds above 5,000 feet prevent us from seeing the Memorial, though we can get an idea of what it will look like when finished from an iron replica near the road.

On to Plan E – It’s getting to be time for lunch, so we find a cute little burger place in the town of Custer.  A unique feature of this quaint Western Town of Custer is that on what seems to be every corner, a creatively painted statue of a bison reminds us of the importance this large creature played in our Nation’s history.  Now it began to pour rain as we run into the café, it poured while we ate lunch, and it drenched us as we ran back to the car.  But we did find out during lunch that the Wind Cave is closed to tours until October due to a problem with their elevators.  So …….

On to Plan whatever – Guess what?  There are a lot of wineries in the Black Hills, and we chose to enjoy wine tasting at two of them in Hill City – Twisted Pine Winery and Naked Winery.  It made for a fun, relaxing afternoon enjoying some very nice wines of the area.  Coming back to our “home”, we had time to relax and visit, then go out for a leisurely, delicious dinner at a local Irish Pub and reflect on this amazing expedition we’ve been on for almost two weeks now.