Friday 24th September 2010
OK, If we're going to save the world environmentally we're gonna need some help. The Holiday Inn Express (Custer) have developed the ultimate in throw away breakfast. Plastic knives, forks, spoons, plates and polystyrene cups for the coffee...Mmmmmmmmm. Kind of makes you think it's not worth bothering when the other side of the world have no idea about wasting plastic. Oh, they do leave your towels if you hang them up so they are not “all” bad. *sarcasm off*
Breakfast itself was a little basic with muffins, bagels, scrambled egg and porrage. Although the did have the most amazing Cinnabon, really naughty but amazing.
First story of the trip is Crazy Horse Monument. As we drove to the site a few miles down the road we suddenly spied the memorial from a distance, and it looked quite spectacular from there, even before we got close.
On arrival we met press man Pat Dobbs who was really helpful and gave us a quick tour. Now Pat is a talker, in a kind of, why say 3 words when 30 will do, way. Although he did give us some great info and looked after us for the next three days.
One of the first things we got to do was talk to Ruth Ziolkowski. Ruth is the wife of Korczak Ziolkowski who was first approached to carve the memorial in 1939. Since his death, Ruth and their family of 10 children have continued the project and it looks like the grandchildren will keep it going.
The carving takes no federal money and has been offered it twice. Korczak always wanted to keep it publicly funded as he believed people would engage with it more and they would see it through to the end.
Ruth, now getting on herself still has a very active role in crazy horse, she still gives lots of interviews and the one with us was fantastic, she is certainly well media trained. She also runs the post office at Crazy horse for which she is paid $1 a year which of course she doesn’t cash as it's federal money.
After that we were given a rare treat in being taken to the top of the carving right in front of the head. Not many people get to do this, most tourists are driven around the bottom.
Pat took us up and recommended we walked right to the end without looking back so we could turn round and experience the full majesty and size of the finished head.
When we turned it was incredible, it looked a lot smoother than I thought it would and was full of some amazing geology that you cant really make out from the visitor center a mile away.
Whilst we were up the top, we met with Kaz Ziolkowski, son of Korczak and Ruth who still works on the monument. He was a little shy at first but soon told us all about what it was like to work on this humongous project.
That evening we thought we'd manage another Custer restaurant for dinner but we didn't get back until late, but on the walk to the same restaurant as the night before, we found another one open.
This was a proper steak house, and one that sold vegetables. AMAZING! The meal was good and only really runied by the bill coming mid way through dinner and the hoovering up. It was cracking on for 8.30pm........
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