Sturgis/Rapid City - Day 17

We spent the day in South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorials.  Yeah, super touristy stuff, but something that I feel every red blooded American should see at some point.  First off, South Dakota was cool as shit.  For young people growing up here, it probably sucks in the typical sense, but it’s definitely a place I would love to come and spend a summer, and kind of immerse myself in the local culture.  It’s filled with national parks, mountains, and forests, and aside from being beautiful, the weather is amazing.  More compelling for me is the rich Native American heritage in the area, being home to the Sioux and Lakota Indians, some of the last tribes to surrender to White rule, and some of the most famous battles happened here in the Black Hills.  When people think of “The West,” most people normally don’t associate the Dakota’s with the myth of the West, but the area is really one of the last strongholds to that tradition and heritage.  I have always had a strong connection with the Native Americans and their way of life, and have always identified with their struggle against a White America.  I think at this point, a lot of people take for granted that the Natives used to occupy the land, but I think a lot of people really don’t grasp the suffering still endured by the Natives, being marginalized to tiny reservations that have become basically shitholes, with no funding, no infrastructure, and no resources.  Without basic needs like decent schooling or hospitals, Indian Reservations have become bastions for crime, violence, and desolation for a dying people desperately trying to hold onto some vestige of their culture. 

The Native Americans, that’s a future trip and exploration, but with the time that we had, it was strictly sight seeing.  The first stop was Mount Rushmore, something that we had seen so many times in postcards, movies, and popular culture in general.  The monument was pretty much as it looks in pictures, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Jefferson in all their stone mountain glory.  We did catch the 14 minute educational flick, made probably decades ago for middle school kids, but it was actually pretty educational nonetheless.  It’s funny that I would have hated sitting through it when I was younger, but I guess after 14 hour marathon drives, 14 minutes isn’t even a noticeable amount of time.  In any case, we learned that the sculptor, ,carved out of the mountain with dynamite, using local miners and construction workers to prep the mountain to loosen areas with drills before they were blasted out.  I can’t imagine using explosives and a mountain as a medium, the scale and scope of such a project is pretty mind boggling.  Plus, if someone fucks up with a charge, and too much is blown off, it’s not the kind of thing is easily corrected, you feel me? Almost 5 minutes after we arrived, caught a thunderstorm that not only dumped the fattest rain drops, but also nickel sized hail.  We bought some rain ponchos at Wall Mart before we left Jersey, but of course Atif and I left that shit in the car.  Sweet.  After scurrying back to the car like wet mice, the Emergency Broadcast System interrupted NPR to warn us of a tornado alert in our area.  Not the type of news we wanted to hear, we dapped to a nearby town, Hill City, for some wi-fi and dinner. 

Afterwards, we hit the Crazy Horse Memorial, another stone mountain, explosion carving, dedicated to the Native Americans.  The statue itself was started in 1948, and the head of Crazy Horse was just completed, so this shit is gonna be a minute until it’s done.  The finished piece looks ill, it’s Crazy Horse perched atop his horse, pointing Westward to the lands of his people.  Since we got there after dark, we caught this laser light show, where they told the store of the monument on projected lights on the work in progress.  The show was cool for the first 5 minutes, but it was pretty chilly by nightfall, and the story was compelling enough to keep the grade school kids entertained.  Regardless, it was cool to see a monument erected for the Native Americans, at least they could get a shitty stone statue in exchange for losing all their land and culture.  Bad trade, but hell, better than nothing, right?

Afterwards, it was time to shove out for Chi Town, a good 14 hour drive.  On the drive out, there was this really creepy, low lyng fog that we had to drive through, and I saw that move The Fog like a month ago, so I couldn’t help but think about that shit.  The worst was when our trunk mysteriously popped open and I had to get out of the car, completely surrounded by fog, and close that shit.  I’m not gonna lie, I was a little shook, I had all these horror movie images in my head.  Atif and I talked about how we’re such City kids at this point, that the majority of our perception of the wilderness and country is on some gory, slasher flick imagery.  When we’re in the City, we know what to expect, even the worst case scenario.  We get stuck up, we can reason wit doods or throw out the wallet.  In the forrest, people find bodies and shit, and besides that, we really have no other frame of reference, ha.  Or maybe, we’re both giant vaginas and we need to get over our irrational fear of the wilderness.  Whatever though, a man knows what he likes and likes what he knows, shiet.