July 16 - South Dakota: Horse Sanctuary, Crazy Horse, & Mount Rushmore

After pulling into The Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary late last night, we awoke this morning and, from our RV window, saw a herd of wild horses heading for the shaded hills before the sun got too hot. That is my kind of morning!

After breakfast, we toured The Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, an 11,000 acre ranch that allows 550 wild mustangs to roam.

The sanctuary was started by Dayton Hyde, who still lives onsite and is active in the operations at 86 years old.

Currently, there are more wild horses than our national herd management areas can support and maintain. The herds are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Each year the wild herds are thinned. Those that are captured are sorted into adoptable/un-adoptable groups. Those that are suitable can be adopted out of various stations ran by the BLM. As you can imagine, adopting a wild mustang is not an easy task. There are few ranches with the time, money, desire, or facilities to accommodate them. This leaves these horses to stand in feedlot corrals to live out the rest of their days. The situation, as a whole, is pretty sad. Without the culling, numerous horses would starve and diminish the grazing for other animals. With the culling, wild horses accustomed to roaming free are destined to dwell in a small cramped pen. Horses used to be sent for slaughter or euthanized. However, activists have since put the brakes on these practices. There is no easy answer to the growing problem, but in the grand scheme -- it is the horses that are being forgotten.

Knowing the situation as it is, Mr. Hyde used his life savings to purchase the land that has become a sanctuary to unadoptable horses that would have otherwise languished in corrals.

The ranch has been used for movie sets. (Hidalgo was filmed in the area.) In addition to the horses, the ranch boasts old homestead sites, a wagon train route, and the sacred site of the Sundance Festival that was celebrated by the Lakota Indians and was outlawed by the U.S. Government when they pushed the Lakota onto reservations. Carved into the sandstone rocks are petroglyphs dating back 10,000 years depicting hunting of mammoth, rock carvings by more recent Lakota Indians, and carvings by pioneers on the wagon trains.

Mr. Hyde (who is someone I'd love to meet) feels that the Lakota have as much rights to the land as he does. Now, the Lakota return to their sacred land for the Sundance Festival each June. No one on the ranch walks or drives on the original festival site out of respect for the grounds. The Lakota have chosen a new ceremonial area, and we had the opportunity to visit it (but not to touch anything). The large pole is a cottonwood tree that is carried in from miles away. It is planted over a buffalo heart and decorated with colored cloths. Each cloth represents a prayer. When the cloth blows off, the prayer has been answered.

We took a private three hour tour of the ranch. It was pretty incredible.  I have taken LOADS of photos.  So, I am posting a few here.  You can click to view our entire photo album in the right column of the blog -- it has lots of AMAZING photos!

I also bought The American Mustang Guidebook at the gift shop.  So, we'll be adding wild horse watching to our "To Do List" as we travel on.

A Blue Stemmed Prickly Poppy.  The stem is a like a straw full of yellow paint.  The Lakota used it for war paint.

 THIS IS A FIGHT SEQUENCE BETWEEN TWO GELDINGS (WHO DON'T REALIZE THEY AREN'T STALLIONS ANY MORE) OVER A GROUP OF MARES:

The Grulla (right) has recently taken the Bay's (left) band of mares.  So, the Bay has been trying to get them back.

The grulla re-gathers his mares.

Deafeated.  Maybe another day...

More Horses at the Sanctuary:

Lakota Prayer Pole

Lakota Prayer Pole

Ancient Petroglyphs

Josh's all-time favorite lawn ornament.  In the yard of the great-grandson of the original homesteader family that settled the ranch.  He still owns a 150 acre plot.

Bachelor Stallion

Painted Desert, Mustang Stallion

After our tour wrapped up around noon, we headed back to the RV for some lunch and decided to avoid the hottest part of the day by taking a nap --- a 4 hour nap. Apparently, we all needed a rest.

We had to get the boys closed toe shoes for our Sanctuary Tour to prevent any rattlesnakes from biting toes.  If you note in our photos, they pretty much wear them 24/7.  Easton's are often on the wrong feet (as they are here).  He "likes them that way".

We left the sanctuary and visited the Mammoth Site to see an active dig for Columbian Mammoth bones.

Easton put on this hat in the Mammoth Site's Gift Shop.  He tells me, "Mom, I'm Yo-Gabba-Gabba!":

For those of you who aren't familiar with the children's show character, here he is.  We thought his comment was quite funny!

Yo Gabba Gabba

Then we drove through Wind Cave National Park, which was full of wildlife sightings. We had pulled off to see two antelope when a lone bison appeared and headed down the trail toward us. He was walking down the well-worn path to reach a muddy area. The bison use the mud to cool off and to eat valuable minerals. The air was humid and it started to sprinkle, forming a huge double rainbow. So, there we were -- with antelope to our left, a buffalo to our right, and a giant rainbow spanning overhead. Pretty sure it doesn't get much better than this...

Looking at antelope on our left.

Here comes a buffalo on our right.

Comin' down the trail.

Eating mud for minerals.

A rainbow forms.

Then, it stretches all the way across.

Then, a double rainbow.

Taking a pic of a pretty bridge.

Then realized there was a bison below.

Bison & Bridge

Wind Cave NP backs up to Custer State Park. We took a drive through Custer Park, seeing more Whitetail and Mule Deer, Bison, Antelope, and gazillions of Prairie Dogs.

We reached a stand of pines where a herd of bison were grazing. We all quietly sat down on tree stumps a short distance from the herd with our camera and binoculars and just enjoyed the serenity of the scene. The little ones were scurrying under their mommas, the large bulls were grunting and calling -- it made my hair stand on end.

We leave Custer State Park, looking forward to checking out the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore National Monument.

The Crazy Horse Memorial was started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. The Indian Chiefs invited Ziolkowski (who had worked for a short time at Mt. Rushmore) to sculpt the monument so that "the white man [will] know that the red man has great heroes too". They commissioned him to carve a statue of Crazy Horse, a Lakota Indian Chief of the South Dakota Black Hills.

An original excavator, no longer in operation ;)

Sketch of how the carvings will be made.

Scaled Version on Left.  Actual Project on Right.

Crazy Horse witnessed the government foresake their promises of the peace treaty in 1868.  The government had promised that his tribe could remain on their sacred lands, but they failed to provide the supplies they had promised and ultimately took the lands they had promised to them. He led his tribe to defend their lands at the Battle of Little Bighorn, but ended up surrendering to the military. He was fatally stabbed in the back by a soldier at Fort Robinson in 1887.

The Crazy Horse Monument is far from being complete. The original sculptor has since died. His wife, children, and grandchildren continue to oversee the project. The finished piece will be 563 ft high and 641 ft long!

Josh and I remarked that while we have seen the works of past civilizations that took several lifetimes to complete, we couldn't think of another contemporary project that would do so.

We finally pulled into Mount Rushmore at 10 p.m. The laser light show had concluded and the hoards of people were headed for the exits. It is a SPECTACULAR time to see it. The monument is dramatically lighted and the place is virtually empty.

Mount Rushmore is carved out of granite rock at Harney Peak. It was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and a crew of 400 workmen from 1927-1941. Each of the four faces, featuring Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt, is 60 ft tall.

We arrived at our campsite at 11:30. Ate pizza and were in bed at 12:15. I really need to re-work our hours of operation ;)