Friday 20 July 2007

Recognise anyone?











After leaving The Rockies we made our way through Wyoming, into Nebraska and onto South Dakota. We were keen to see a few of the famous sights. The first photo (click on the picture and look closely) is the Crazy Horse Memorial. It's the worlds largest monument (though not yet finished) in honour of the famed Sioux leader 'Crazy Horse'. It's mainly the face at the minute but should be finished in about 10-15 yrs and will show Crazy Horse astride his horse and will be 560ft high, 640ft long. (We know all of this as Jim, an elderly guy working in the information centre gave us the full run down. He also insisted on letting us have a piece of the rock from the blast. I did have to explain that we were back packing and a piece of rock the size of a brick would prove a little cumbersome. He gladly exchanged it for us!)
We then drove through the Black Hills of Dakota where much to Keith's horror I sang the Calamity Jane song all the way, in fact I'm singing whilst having my picture taken! The area of the 'hills' is huge and called 'black' for all the dark Ponderosa pines that are there.
Our next port of call was the famous 'Mount Rushmore'. The sculpture took about 14 years and is of four famous American presidents: Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Lincoln. Whilst there there was another addition, does anyone recognise the fifth president, the one far left!!

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