When A Scenic Highway Is Really Scenic

We left Yellowstone fairly convinced (though we didn't discuss it) that we'd never see sites as beautiful.  Our next destination? Mount Rushmore. John was particularly excited since he's never seen it.

When we planned our trip we vowed to forego interstates whenever possible and opt for roads less traveled. Whitey at the KOA told John that once we got into South Dakota we should take the Spearfish Canyon National Scenic Byway to  Hill City. Whitey even gave John a book that has a self-guided tour of the byway in it.

Just a note. We've had one of these guides for nearly every leg of our trip and they've been so informative all along the way. Next time you're taking a road trip try to find one.

On the byway we saw steep canyon walls layered with shale, red/pink limestone, and buff-colored limestone. We saw trees that were both deciduous and evergreen. The guidebook said we  saw woodpeckers, blue jays, cliff swallows…we'll just take their word for that. We saw waterfalls and streams. All on a road that wound round and round, up and down for 18 miles. We were wrong about Yellowstone being the last beautiful place we'd see. Spearfish Canyon is one edge of the Black Hills and it's breathtaking.

Wild Bill Hickok was shot here

Kevin Costner's place

We drove through Lead, which is an old west mining town, then onto Deadwood. We were a little afraid Deadwood would be the Silver Dollar City of South Dakota (not that there's anything wrong with SDC), but it was a nice little town with a great history. Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Poker Alice, Potato Creek Johnny, Madame Dora DuFran and bunches of other infamous people with great names, all lived and died here.

Deadwood was a rowdy town built on gold and gambling. This is where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back holding his "deadman's" poker hand of 2 black eights and 2 black aces. Calamity Jane lived into her fifties and wasn't much of a looker, but she was good at fighting Indians, sharp shooting, and riding horses. She traveled with Buffalo Bill's show for a few years. Even though movies portray C. Jane and W. Bill as romantically involved…they weren't. Still she's buried next to him in the Mt. Moriah Cemetery.

We stopped into the visitors center and the lady gave us a map of a walking tour through town. She talked really fast and circled places of interest, then got a little annoyed with us when we asked a couple of questions. So we set off on our own.

There are lots of casinos in this little town and during the summer there's live music up and down the main street. Kevin Costner owns a restaurant here. We went by it, but didn't see him.

Calamity Jane wasn't cute, but Wild Bill was

People leave things for WBH

Of course we went through the Adams Museum and made the trip up a steep, winding hill on the edge of town to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery. We paid our respects to Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

We drove into Hill City and found a campground halfway between the Crazy Horse Museum and Mount Rushmore. It was a KOA and the biggest thing we've ever seen. Fortunately this is the off season. I'm not sure we're up for what this place must look like in the summer and it's jam packed. There's the regular camp sites, plus pools, water slides, wagon rides, a restaurant, a pub, an arcade center, blah, blah, blah. Not our cup for tea, but okay for this time of year. There were maybe 3 other motorhomes there.

scale model of Crazy Horse monument
there's a feather on his head

Crazy Horse monument. No feather. This is a profile--
facing right at the top-most section

After we checked in we headed straight for the Crazy Horse Memorial. Now this is kind of a weird and controversial spot. After Mt. Rushmore was completed, Sitting Bull contacted a sculptor and said, "Hey, we want one of our leaders on a mountain. It should be Crazy Horse." So this sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who had worked on Mt. Rushmore until he was fired, said "Sure, I can do that." The first blast was made in 1948. He died before the face was finished so his family has carried on the work. The whole project is a private enterprise and it's apparent that they're very into raising money to fund it. This mountain carving is massive--several times larger than Mt. Rushmore. Work is slow, slow, slow. Hard to know if the Crazy Horse face on the mountain looks like him since there are no photos of Crazy Horse.

It also bothers me that the artist drawings show a big feather sticking up at the back of Crazy Horse's head, but the head that's on the mountain so far has been blasted off smooth on top. Are they going to graft the feather on? Forget the feather? No one had any answers.

Now we were hungry and decided to go into town to get a buffalo burger (low in fat, very tasty). We walked into this little place, and guess what?!?? The first Blues/Blackhawks playoff game was on television. Not only that…EVERY SINGLE booth had its own television. We got to watch the Blues game clear to the overtime. Then we went back to the campground and I became a big hero to Mr. C by finding a live stream of KMOX radio and playing it on my iPhone. They won in a triple overtime! How exciting!!

Kathryn