Deadwood, Sturgis, and Crazy Horse

 August 25

We decided to take the dogs with us on our sightseeing trip today.   We headed for Deadwood first, and were surprised to find a bustling tourist town full of casinos and hotels.  We happened to arrive in the middle of  the "Kool Deadwood Nites" festival which is a gathering of about a trillion antique vehicles for show and for sale.  We have been seeing them on the roads everywhere but here they were in force!  Steve's eyes were bugging out of his head!   The traffic was horrific and there was no parking anywhere, so we did not even get to go up to Boot Hill to see Wild Bill Hickok's grave!  All we wanted to do was get out of that traffic!

So we finally found our way out of town and headed toward Sturgis.

 As we came into town we had fond thoughts of our motorcycle friends and regrets that we never made it here with Gordon or Douglass and Erik.  We stopped at the Sturgis Harley-Davidson shop to pick up a t-shirt for a friend, then headed out to see where much of the action takes place during Bike Week.  WOW.

We stopped first at the Full Throttle Saloon, which simply defies description!

Sculpture at the Full Throttle Saloon

Also at the Full Throttle.

A little further down the road was the Buffalo Chip which is where we are told that hundreds (thousands?) of bikers congregate during bike week.  We missed it by about 10 days, but I don't know if Steve and I could have handled it, RVers that we are!  Sturgis is cool!

We drove out to Bear Butte to see the State Park and photograph some bison,  then to the campground as the dogs had had enough of the backseat of the Jeep (can you relate, Gary and Barb?) and we had had enough of them.

Bear Butte

Back at the campground, we dropped the dogs, rested a while, then went to see the light show at the Crazy Horse Monument.  The Visitor's Center is very informative with a film, models of the sculpture 1/34 of the finished size, a museum, gift store, and sculptor's studio.

How the finished sculpture will look.

The monument has been worked on since 1948, and all that is done is the face of Crazy Horse!   I don't think it will be finished in my lifetime.  However, it is a huge undertaking, and when completed will be much bigger than Mt. Rushmore.  In fact, all 4 presidents would fit in the space that will be the head of the horse in this monument.  When finished, it will be the largest sculpture in the world at 641 feet wide and 563 feet high.

All that is completed so far. 

Model of what the finished statue will look like. 

Almost time for the light show. 

The light show was pretty spectacular.  It is projected on the side of the mountain using 3 of the largest lasers in the world, an 8,800 watt stereo system throughout the complex, twenty-five 2,000 watt lights in light banks around the mountain, and 3 of the world's largest slide projectors.  We enjoyed it very much.