lauren's Update

We’ve been in and out of cell service the past couple of days and we haven’t been sitting still long enough to write much. Just wanted to update y’all on where we’ve been and where we’re going. This will be strictly fact; hopefully there will be time and service later for dad to write another story.


Sun:

We entered Badlands National Park, South Dakota. No words to really describe the beauty there, it was just purely awesome. In the words of Wallace Stegner “You are acutely aware of yourself. How large the Earth is, even larger the Sky, and how very, very small you are.” That night we stayed in the park itself.

Badlands

Mon:




We explored Badlands more; we went for a hike and found a really cool wash in the rocks that created a spiral cave to climb in. We saw the Yellow Mounds in the Badlands, a large and breathtakingly beautiful canyon, and many other gorgeous places.

The Little Cave

Yellow Mounds

Then we continued on west and reached Crazy Horse Monument by dinner. Crazy Horse Monument was amazing, huge, and inspiring. The man who was commissioned to create the monument worked for years by himself, with nothing but an old Buda air compressor and mountain goats to keep him company. When he died his family took over the project. Their goal is to create this monument without government aid, and several times they have turned down multi-million dollar grants and have chosen to continue themselves. When Crazy Horse Monument is finished it will be the largest monument in the world. To put it into perspective; the Statue of Liberty is about 325 ft, Crazy Horse is 583 ft tall, all 60 foot tall faces on Mt. Rushmore can fit in Crazy Horse’s Head, and the hole in the rock, underneath his arm can hold a 10 story building.

Crazy Horse

A Model of the Finished Product

Tues.

We stayed at a campground not far from Crazy Horse and in the morning traveled the few miles to Mt Rushmore, which was really neat. We didn’t stay long, just took a few pictures and then continued on to Custer State Park. There we had to stop for about 15 minutes because of a traffic jam.

Traffic Jam!

After driving through Custer we reached Wind Cave National Park. This cave is really amazing; it is one of the few caves in the world which contains rock formations called Boxwork. Wind Cave was given its name because the change in the air pressure causes the air to rush out of holes on the surface of the cave. From Wind Cave we traveled towards Yellowstone.

box work

and more box work

Wind Cave



Weds. 
We continued on in the direction of Yellowstone, stopped once in Cody, Wyoming and reached Yellowstone at about 4:00.

 

Thurs:

We are going to explore the park, we will post more later.