Day 6

The 6th day of the tour focused on the landmarks around the Black Mountains.

I started the day with a quick morning walk to have another quick explore of the town of Deadwood.

From our hotel we'd head to the small town of Lead (cool name) to visit the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Centre. The main laboratory is located within a converted mine nearby and it is here that specialist physics research into dark matter and neutrinos have taken place. This was a brief stop and we obviously weren't going to be able to enter the mine, so we made do with the visitor centre that explained the research.

From there we headed to the Crazy Horse monument. This is a privately funded project that is aiming to build a huge statue of Crazy Horse out of a mountain, similar to the nearby Mount Rushmore. It is a project that has been going on for years and is going to run for many years to come, I doubt it'll be finished in my lifetime. As well as the mountain carving there's a museum into the life of Crazy Horse and the Lakota tribe.

Our next stop was Mount Rushmore which was one of my bucket list items and a place I never thought I'd get to as I don't drive and there's not much in the way of rollercoasters in the area that would warrant a theme park trip here (although an alpine coaster has opened in the last year so that's changed). This was an incredible monument and close to being added to my "awesome" list. The fact it overshadows the Crazy Horse project so much due to it being state-funded was the only negative I could find here. It's a shame the country won't contribute to that rival project.

In the afternoon we crossed into Wyoming (another new state tick) and made a quick stop at the Vore Buffalo Jump, an archaeological project on a site where Indians would steer buffaloes off a cliff to their death so that the tribe could have a source of meat and furs to see them through the coming months. This was an eye opening project on account of the amount of animal that were killed here, and the depth to which the dig had gone.

Our final stop was a pleasant surprise as we went for a hike around the base of Devil's Tower, a huge rock outcrop in the middle of nowhere. It's famous for being the mountain carved out of mashed potato in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now stupid me loved the film but never realised the location was real until I researched the itinerary and had a "wow" moment when I recognised it.

The highlight of the morning walk was the Adam's house which is recognised as one of the best western museums in the country. Unfortunately it hadn't opened yet so I just go to look at the exterior, which was cool more so when you realise the building is over 130 years old.

Some rather nice old bikes I found on display outside a garage.  

The Sanford centre was a surprising addition to the trip having been announced on the day. I think the organisers had realised there was time in the morning to include it. Nice!

This is a map of the mine, a bit hard to make out against the background but it's deep!

The center has a number of panels explaining the research that has gone on which is great. I particularly liked the inclusion of peanut butter when describing matter and bananas when describing radiation. It's details like that that make education possible haha!

This mining hole was pretty deep!

The actual mine however is located behind the centre in that hill.

The gift shop had a near-complete set of the state fridge magnets and the board, which I'd never seen before. I would have bought this if I'd have the space to carry it; a bargain at just over $100 haha!

Everyone who photographed this section of mine tunnel did so wishing it could be a stargate.

What they didn't realise was that once they were all inside, that's exactly what it became...

Some little graffiti on the road.

The Crazy Horse monument has a way to go.

I rode the bus down to the bottom of the monument to take some photos from under it. Good timing as it was the only bus running in the window that we had here.

I love the exclusion for police as if they'd ever check this.

The museum was again really interesting but this one was different in that the focus was much more from the Indian's perspective.

This statue gives a great indication of how the final monument will look and how much more there is to go to get there.

A nice sculpture just outside the museum.

I'ts Mount Rushmore baby! This was incredible and you don't really the scale of it until you're standing in front of it.

I wasn't aware that the original design featured torsos

I took a little walk beneath the monument and it's still cool. They do have a longer walk but a section of it was closed for repairs so I couldn't complete the walk and had to head back the way I came.

One of the trails leads around the back of the mountain where you can see the lesser known part of Mount Rushmore.  :p

There's some vanilla ice cream rumoured to have come from a recipe written by Jefferson. I don't know if this is true or just some imaginative tourist marketing.

On leaving Rushmore I passed this and I knew that the new alpine coaster was just 20 minutes away from Rushmore but I let it go, after all it wasn't to be a coaster trip. Yay me!

The Buffalo Jump is a small location that could be easily missed on the drive past. 

Views from the edge. Do remember if you're going to walk down, you need to walk back out.

This explains how the trap worked.

The dig site is incredible.

and finishing up with the Devil's Tower which is immense.

The walk around it took about 40 minutes.

The start and end side looked immense in the falling sunlight.

Another photo opportunity was taken as we left for those who were happy to get dirtier than the rest.

We finished with a group meal in the town of Sundance which was where the Sundance kid took his name from. I knew there was this statue of him here so I left the meal early to photograph it.

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