Day 12: Custer and Crazy Horse

We were pretty tired when we woke up. The tent was very cold and the cold kept waking me up.

We decided to drive to Custer State Park to drive the wildlife loop, which we were told would take about an hour. It took a bit longer than that because we stopped a couple of times and the road was not that easy for an RV. In fact, at one point there was a very sharp turn on a very steep decline and it was pretty scary. My dad had to back the RV up on a hill to make the curve while about 20 motorcycles waited behind him.

Custer State Park became a game reserve in 1913 and became a state park in 1919. In 1914, South Dakota bought 36 bison to put in the park. There are now supposed to be 1500 bison in Custer State Park.

The park and the nearby town were named for General George Custer, a rather controversial historical figure. He graduated from West Point last in his class. He became a general for the Union Army in the Civil War and helped bring about the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. After the Civil War, Custer helped the army by fighting the Plains Indians in an effort to take over their land. He helped force the Lakota Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne to move to reservations. If they did not, there were considered hostile. The Plains Indian tribes were furious with the government for pushing them off their land, for forcing them to give up their nomadic lifestyle and live on a reservation, and for killing their bison, which were first killed to make room for railroad tracks and then just killed for sport. In 1868 the Black Hills had been designated as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. However, when Custer led an army expedition into the Black Hills in 1874 and gold was found, the US government broke the treaty and decided to take over the land. This brought about the gold rush of 1876, which is also what helped created the town of Deadwood (see Day 5 of the blog). The Native Americans resisted and joined together with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to defend their land at what is known as Custer's Last Stand or "The Battle of Little Bighorn." Custer's army was surprised by the Native Americans and defeated. Custer was shot twice and died. He was 36 years old. Not one member of his 40 person cavalry lived to tell the tale of his death.

The death of Custer and his men enraged the US Army and they vowed to wipe out all of the Plains Indians or make them go to reservations. One year later, the US Army succeeded. Crazy Horse was killed while surrendering in 1877. Sitting Bull went to live on a reservation but was killed in a fight in 1890. Custer was honored by having a town and a state park named after him.

We didn't see nearly as much wildlife as I would have liked on the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park. I thought we would see hundreds of bison and we only saw two. The first time we saw one it was on my side of the car and I was so excited to get the window open for the bison that I broke the window. I'm not sure how much they are going to charge us for this. We also got to see the Begging Burros (donkeys) who were definitely begging for food, going right up to the cars and the many bikers who had decided to leave the Sturgis Rally for the somewhat quieter streets of Custer.

I would definitely like to go back to Custer some day when Sturgis isn't going on. I would also like to go back in a car so we could drive the Needles Highway which is another loop of Custer that has all these needle like structures with tunnels that RVs just can't fit through. There is also another loop called Iron Mountain Road that has a lot of wildlife. I also wish we had time to go to Sylvan Lake.

I wish we could have stopped at the State Game Lodge, also known as the Summer White House because Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1927 there. Now it is a hotel and restaurant. It was first built in 1921 and then burned down 72 days later so they had to rebuild it and reopen it in 1922.

We drove right from Custer to Crazy Horse Memorial. I had been told that Crazy Horse is more impressive than Mount Rushmore. At first, I wasn't sure because the monument is so far away that you can't see how glorious it is. It also isn't finished, which actually adds to its intrigue. However, after spending the afternoon there, I realized that Crazy Horse is much more than the actual monument. First of all, you learn the story of how and why Crazy Horse was chosen to be honored. Crazy Horse was a Lakota leader who fought to stop people from taking his people's land. He was in charge of 1000 men in the Battle of Little Big Horn which, as I mentioned above, is where Custer was killed.

At Crazy Horse Memorial, we also learned about Korczak Ziolkowski, the man chosen to design and build it. He was a Polish-American furniture maker and sculptor who had worked on Mount Rushmore before he was fired by Gutzom Borglum because he didn't like taking orders from him. Korzcak died in 1982 with the memorial completely unfinished and his wife Ruth, along with their 10 children, took over the construction of the monument. She lived until 2014 and now her children and some of her grandchildren have taken over the work.

Mount Rushmore, although much smaller in scale than Crazy Horse, took 14 years to complete. The building of Crazy Horse began in 1948 and people hope it will be finished by 2048. Only 16 people work on it each day, including 2 grandchildren of Ziolkowski. This seems like a pretty small number of people working on it. I told my kids that I will go back with them when they have children for the 100th year anniversary in 1948 and maybe it will be done.

Crazy Horse's face is 87 feet, while George Washington's face on Mount Rushmore is 60 feet. The horse on Crazy Horse Memorial is going to be 219 feet (22 stories)) high when completed.

We ate lunch at the Laughing Water, the only Crazy Horse restaurant. My dad and Ellie had something called Tatanka Stew, which was made of bison, carrots, onions and potatoes and came with Native American fry bread. My mom and I got the taco salad bar, where we got to make our own Native American tacos on the fry bread. It was so good.

We watched the 20 minute informational movie on the creation of Crazy Horse and then walked through the log cabin house that the family lived in and is now on display. There is a grand piano and a mirror that once belonged to Marie Antoinette that Korczak bought when he was 22. I'm not sure what he was doing when he was 22 to be able to afford an ornate mirror from Marie Antoinette, so I guess I will have to look that up. We also saw his art studio.

We decided to spend an extra $4 per person (free for the twins) to take a bus ride to get a mile closer to the monument. For $125 a person, you can get a van to drive you all the way up to his face, but we decided not to spend that kind of money. I'm so glad we did the bus tour. We were able to get to the base of the mountain and Rick, our guide, was so funny and full of information. I highly recommend taking the time to do the bus tour.

There is some controversy about the memorial because some Native Americans believe that the Ziolkowskis have made millions of dollars from a statue that was just supposed to be a memorial for Native Americans and not a money making operation. Also, some also feel that Korczak was never granted official permission from the Lakota to build the statue on their sacred land.

We left around 4:45 and went back to our RV park to swim and relax. We ate in Custer at a cute little place called Bobkat's Purple Pie Place where Ellie had walked yesterday to get some pie. My parents and Ellie had some great chicken pot pie and I had an Italian panini and the boys had homemade macaroni and cheese. We topped it all off with ice cream, banana cream pie, and peanut butter pie.

We had talked about driving by Crazy Horse to see the light show they put on at night, but we were all too tired.

Diego, Luca and Nico decided to sleep in the tent, but Luca eventually came inside.