On Saturday, September 15th we took a drive through Needles Highway, then visited Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials.
A panoramic view of rock formations along Needles Highway. From this point one can see President Washington's side profile. (Just peering out between the two big rock formations.)
A closer shot of Wahington's side profile.
A detailed close-up shot taken by Matthew.
On the way to Mount Rushmore, we spotted some Bighorn Sheep along the road. They didn't seem to mind us getting pretty close to take some photos of them.
Most likely this group of Bighorn Sheep were female. Ewes do have horns, but they are shorter with less curvature, like these.
View of Mount Rushmore from the Needles Drive Highway.
There are several tunnels to drive through along Needles Drive. This particular one has views of Mount Rushmore as you come out the other side.
Arriving at Mount Rushmore Memorial. Each flag represents each of the 50 states of the US.
Mount Rushmore
Panoramic of Mount Rushmore. The day we were there we noticed a Mountain Goat on the top of the mountain.
We took a trail that took us a little closer to the base of Mount Rushmore. We were able to take some zoomed in shots of the faces.
Frontal extreme close-up of President Washington.
Lincoln's face close-up; it looks as if he has scars across his face.
Once we were finished visiting Mount Rushmore, we visited the Crazy Horse Memorial. The face of Crazy Horse is now finished.
The head of Crazy Horse measures 87' in height.
Black and Whites of the memorial.
From the lookout area.
A smaller sculpture at the visitor's center displays how the memorial will appear when finished.
The drill that sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski used when he first began carving Crazy Horse.
A photo of Korczak Ziolkowski on the mountain (displayed in the visitor's center). Note the funny "SLOW MAN AT WORK" sign in the background.
Other sculptures done by Korczak. I had to do a double take when I saw the sculpture of the woman; it looked so life like!
"Kaput, kaput, kaput" is how Korczak described the engine on this machine failing and stopping, just after he reached the top of the mountain after restarting it previously. He would climb up and down the mountain several times to restart this.
Heading back to camp; more spectaular views of the montains.
A lone bison wandering within the park.
We spotted several fawns within the park; this one still had it's spots! So cute!
There were an abundance of very large buks roaming around Custer State Park as well on Saturday evening. I can't remember when the last time was that I had seen bucks this big!
Beautiful buck!
No comments:
Post a Comment