Back in the Black Hills

We are back in our South Dakota home.  We pulled into Custer’s Gulch last Friday afternoon to find our good friends, Rick and Linda Lorenz, waiting for us.  We’re parked in our favorite spot…space #49, with a lovely green lawn and the National Forest just outside our back door.

On Saturday morning, I struggled out of bed to make my coffee and saw this hot air balloon headed straight for the camp.   I sipped my coffee and watched it pass directly overhead and disappear behind the rocky ridge to the west.  It was a great welcome to the Black Hills.

We have finished our first week here in Custer.  It has been fun, and filled with activities.  We have enjoyed our walks in the national forest adjacent to our RV park.  Rick and Linda accompanied us on this one.

We got in our miles, and had a good view of the forest and in the far distance the Crazy Horse Memorial. 

We also drove through Custer State Park to look for wildlife.  The bison were out in force, drifting through the tall grasses and lounging and chewing their cuds.  

This bull was showing the “8” brand on his right hip, designating his birth year as 2008.  The “s” shape below identifies him as one of the Custer State Park bison herd.  As a ten-year-old, he is one of the older animals.

The CSP bison herd varies in size from about 850 to an optimum 1400 animals, depending on range conditions.  Each fall the bison are rounded up, the calves branded and vaccinated and the cows pregnancy-tested.  At this time, excess animals are sold to keep the herd within the size the range conditions can support.

When we drove the wildlife loop, the herd was spread out over the hills,

and lounging beside the road adjacent to the employee housing RV park.  CSP is a good place to be a bison.

On Thursday night, the weather was good and we drove out to Crazy Horse with Rick and Linda to enjoy the laser light show and “night blast.”  We arrived at twilight and the massive stature on the mountain was impressive against the darkening sky.

Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish-American sculptor who had worked on the Mount Rushmore project, was commissioned by Chief Henry Standing Bear of the Oglala Lakota tribe to carve a monument on Thunderhead Mountain between between Custer and Hill City, South Dakota, to show that the Native Americans also had heroes.  Chief Crazy Horse was chosen as the subject of the statue, which was begun in 1948.  Still under construction, the work has been carried on after Korczak’s death in 1982 by his family.  Work is ongoing on the colossal statue, which is planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high.  (By comparison, the heads of the four U.S. presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high.)  When completed, the Crazy Horse Memorial will become the world’s largest sculpture.  On site, there is this scale model of the sculpture as it will look when completed.  

An hour after we arrived, the light show, accompanied by music and narration, was projected on the face of the mountain.  

The climax of the evening was the night blast.  Done twice each year, in June and September, the night blast is a way to give back to the community as well as to educate visitors in the purpose of the memorial and the affiliated university and museum.  This year, there were 110 blasts, one for each year since the birth of sculptor Ziolkowski.  It was quite impressive.

P.S. And after hearing the story of the Crazy Horse Memorial, now we know why author Craig Johnson chose Henry Standing Bear as the name for one of the principal characters in his Longmire Mysteries and the Netflix series of the same name.  Big shoes to fill.