Crazy Horse

We’ve been back from South Dakota for a couple of weeks now but I still want to talk about Crazy Horse. That place was amazing! I didn’t realize that basically the family of the man who began carving Crazy Horse are the ones working on it. I also didn’t realize that they don’t accept federal or state funding. It is completely funded by private donations.

We went in the evening which gave us time to look around and watch the laser light show. I really enjoyed that. It depicted the passage of life in the United States, and the process of work that Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski went through while working on the monument. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it very much.

There are also an American Indian museum and you can see other sculptures that Korczak Ziolkowski made in his lifetime. There a grand plans for the ground including building an Indian university for medical studies. All of this will take a great deal of time and I will be surprised if it is all finished within my lifetime, especially the monument. Although with the equipment and technology we have today, work on the monument is probably going faster than is was when Korczak Ziolkowski began back in 1947.

The monument as it is today. I didn’t realize how large it was. Mt. Rushmore can fit into the uncarved part behind Crazy Horse’s head. Also the tunnel you see is 10 stories high!. They are working on the horse at this time and the white outline you see is part of the horses head. The tunnel will eventually be the opening between Crazy Horse’s arm and the horse.

An upclose night shot of the head. You can get an idea of how large it is by the equipment beside it. That is not toy!

This is what the monument will look like when completed. It will be a 3D monument.

Custer State Park

We went to Custer State Park today. It was a little rainy at times but the weather was very cool. We took the Needles Highway to the park which is a scenic route with winding hairpin turns. I really enjoyed the park and surrounding area. There was great scenery and lots of animals to see. We stopped at one area and there were several people looking at something on the rocks. It was ground squirrles, which like prairie dogs are cute but incredibly annoying. This is the type of park that has animals, such as buffalo, walking whereever they want. We passed by this one on the side of the road.

Most of the others we saw we out in the fields.

We also saw some antelope.

As well as a few donkeys!

I really enjoyed this drive. Tonight we are going to Crazy Horse. I’ll let you know how it is!

Prairie Dogs, Deadwood, & Free Roaming Cattle

There are prairie dogs here that are the size of small raccoons. They are huge and apparently well fed! The tourists stop to take pictures of them, which I can understand. I, on the other hand, think they are one of the most annoying creatures around. I’m not sure what they are good for except hunting practice.

We went to Deadwood on Thursday. We had planned to stay until the Jack McCall trial reenactment at 8:00 pm but there really wasn’t a whole lot to do there, except gamble. We did visit the Adams House museum, Wild Bill Hickok’s gravesite, saw where he was shot, spend $40.00 in a slot machine, and walked around town some. There really wasn’t enough to do to justify staying all day except gamble and we didn’t feel like doing that.

On the way back we drove through Keystone and stopped to eat and shop. We ate at the Ruby House Restaurant. It was very good and if you happen to go to Keystone, SD I would recommend it. It is a little pricey though but worth it. We drove back on the Old Hill City road which the 1880 train winds around. It was a very curvy and slow driving road but with great scenery. Just a few miles out of Hill City we came up on some cows roaming down the road. There were about 10 head and they were all young, maybe a year or two. A little farther down we came up on several more head grazing in an open, unfenced area. I assume they got out of somewhere but who knows, maybe someone still believes in free range cattle! LOL

It was a good day in all. We relaxed in our room and watch a little TV, something we really haven’t done since we got here.

Mount Rushmore

We went to Mt. Rushmore today. Of course we come to South Dakota and we bring the heat! The weather last night said this was the 1st heat wave of the summer and it was expected to get to 95 today, which is a heck of a lot better than 100 or more but still hot! Even with the heat though, we enjoyed ourselves and spent a few hours there. We took tons of photos, I think Les had over 250 photos so I won’t post them all but I will show a few. More will be on facebook but probably not until we get home.

It was exciting to see everything in person. Sure we had seen Mt. Rushmore on TV and movies but there is nothing like seeing it in person. It’s just amazing to think about the work that went into constructing the monument and the fact that is was constructed from 1927 to 1941! It was very dangerous work.

There is a crevice in the rocks you can go into and take a picture. I loved the effect.

Some of the pictures Les took look like we were right up by the monument. I think Roosevelt is my favorite of the carvings.

We came back later for the night show. It was nice and I’m glad we went but I enjoyed the day trip much more. Lighting up the monument at night was very beautiful though.

1880 Train

Our first full day in South Dakota we rode the 1880 Train. It’s an old steam train that runs from Hill City to Keystone. It’s only 10 miles between the towns but the ride round trip takes over 2 hours. It was a very nice ride. The train goes  through the Black Hill National Forest but there are private residences located in the forest. These were originally owned by miners in the area and were either sold or passed down through the generations.

On the way to keystone we rode in a car named Oreville.

It is a restored rail car that was restored to look like it did when it was new. They said that 4 types of wood was used for the interior – pine, oak, elm, and Honduran mahogany. I loved the windows, they were a beautiful green glass.

On the way back we rode in a different car which had larger windows that were better for taking pictures from. Except I didn’t take as many pictures!

The scenery is beautiful!

First Shawl

I finished my shawl last week. I think it’ll be good to use around the house when I get too cold. I was worried all the way through about unraveling the fringe at the end but it was soooo easy! The pattern is the Dropped Stitch Shawl from Knit Picks. I’d link it but it seems they took it off their site, or at least I couldn’t find it.

I like the way the yarn knitted up into verticle stripes. The yarn is Brett Marble dk in the MT 5 (Granite) colorway. If I were to knit it again, I would have used the whole extra skein of yarn I had to purchase. This took just over 2 skeins and I think I would have liked it to be a little longer. It’s a 100% acrylic yarn but feels very nice.

Below is a (not very good) picture of it. It was very windy that day and I didn’t want to wait another day to take the picture. Now I’m just down to 4 WIPs (works in progress) plus the sweater I started for Emily, the sweater I want to make for Timmy and the socks I want to start. That’s only 7, not too bad….

Traveling to South Dakota

We left for vacation Monday morning around 10:00. Stopped off at work to check and yep, I got my new textbooks! YEAH! The trip was pretty nice. I started Emily’s sweater and made it a little over halfway through the back. I also brought the yarn for Timmy’s sweater, yarn to start some socks, plus a dishcloth I started knitting in June ad never finished.

Any, vacation. It only took a little over 8 hours to get here. I haven’t been through Nebraska and South Dakota before. It was intererested, a few miles before Chadron, we rounded a hill and BOOM! there were trees every where! We were in the Nebraska National Forest. I didn’t even know Nebraska had a forest. Somehow the words Nebraska and forest just don’t go together. It was nice though and ended almost as suddenly as it began.  

South Dakota is very pretty. The highway we were on went  through Wind Cave National Park. It was cool as there were buffalo, antelope, and other animals roaming free. And by roaming free, I mean free – no fences. We passed by some buffalo that were on our shoulder of the road. Those are huge animals! They could do some damage to my car if they wanted to. A few miles later we passed some bikers headed the other direction. I thought that would really be scary- passing by the buffalo on a motorcycle!

We didn’t have a hotel reservation for Monday night so checked out some hotels when we got to Hill City. We could have stayed at the Holiday Express for the low price of $180 but instead we chose the Super 8 for a bargain price of $100. It was decent, except someone apparently can’t drive right and ran into my car in the parking lot. They hit the back bumper and didn’t dent it but did scratch about a 2×4 inch length of paint off. It looks very ugly but will be easy to fix when we get home. And do you think the people who did it left a note! If they did it was on invisible paper written in invisible ink. Oh, well it could have been worse.

More to come later – with pictures!

Wow, that long??

Ok, it has been way too long since I posted! I’m sure you all missed me and by you all I of course mean me, myself and I. I gotta get back on to this thing. Emily is getting big! She’s 8 months old and has her first tooth. Hubby and I get to see her a lot, which is fun. She loves Grandma and Grandpa.

I’ve been knitting lots. I made a dress for Emily, which was unfortunately washed (which was ok) and dried (not ok) and shrunk. I’ll make sure that everything else I make is wash and dry-able. I made her a bunny blanket which turned out wonderful, I’ve gotten so many comments on it. I have a sweater to make her for the fall/winter,I just haven’t started it. I decided that July was going to be my “finish as many WIPs” month. Not sure I’ll get too many finished but I have resisting the STRONG urge to start anything new. I have a bag I’m about finished with. It’s a mystery pattern by SheKnits and has been a great learning experience! I’ve used three colors together, made pockets, and will be makingcable/icord straps and then will felt it! Can’t wait until it’s finished and I hope I don’t screw it up. I have four other WIPs on my Ravelry project page and I hope to finish at least three of them. I’ll finish the SheKnits bag, the Honey Bee Stitch cloth (which feels like cheating because it’s just a dishcloth), and the Summer Drop. The Summer Drop is a shawl which I want to finish before August to take on our vacation to South Dakota. The weather gets much cooler in the evenings there so I thought it would be nice to have. I’ll take the mittens and the other bag with me plus a couple of other projects. It is an eight hour drive one way, plus I’ll need something to keep me busy at night (don’t let Hubby see that comment! :0).

In case you missed it in the previous paragraph, We are taking a vacation! Almost didn’t but Hubby really liked the idea of South Dakota. We are staying at a lodge there and will visit Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, and lots of other historic/fun places. Oh, I will also be visiting  Wool N Stuffin Hill City, SD. They mainly sell items made from wool but do have some Brown Sheep yarn and some Homespun yarn from Bemidji. I’m going to have to figure out which pattern I want to make so I’ll know how much yarn to get. Otherwise, I’ll just buy one skein and I have so many “just one skeins” sitting around that I don’t need anymore! I’ll have lots of details about the trip when I get back.

So that’s just a quick run down of grandbaby, knitting, and vacation. Let’s hope I don’t just up and dissapear again!

Ummm, I don’t think so.

Ok I like many of the patterns that Drops designs publishes. This is not one of them. I’m not really feeling the pom pom on the head thing. However I could wear the caplet thing when I’m cold from the boobs up or when I eat – I am such a messy eater!

Snow Day

Yeah, we have a snow day today! The first of the year for us and the best part, there’s very little snow on the ground! I can still make it to the gym! Yes, teachers are as bad as students when it comes to wanting a snow day. It was soooo nice getting a little extra sleep.

We were supposed to have blizzard conditions so our superintendent called off school because of the forecast. Actually EVERYONE in the area called off school except the university. It is snowing outside and it is very windy. The snow is blowing horizontally but it’s not a heavy snow and it’s supposed to end by this afternoon. So I have an unexpected and much appreciated 3 day weekend. I plan to spend today grading papers so I can enjoy the rest of the weekend with no worries!