Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse

Well we're back, and once again we've managed to fill in our weekend travelling around Wyoming. There's not a lot left that we haven't seen but we're really keen to see the difference between winter and summer.

Talk about winter, the following is an extract of a severe weather alert for our region over the next week. We don't have a single forecasted day over zero degrees C for the next seven days. Rememeber they are talking degrees F. At -30 F it will be -35 C

A STRONG COLD FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE NORTHERN AND CENTRAL PLAINS TONIGHT. BEHIND THE FRONT...FRIGID ARCTIC AIR WILL SETTLE OVER THE AREA BRINGING WELL BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES. BY FRIDAY... HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE ONLY EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM NEAR ZERO OVER NORTHEAST WYOMING...THE BLACK HILLS...AND NORTHWEST SOUTH DAKOTA...TO NEAR 10 ABOVE ZERO OVER FAR SOUTHWEST AND SOUTH CENTRAL SOUTH DAKOTA. WITH GUSTY NORTH WINDS THURSDAY INTO FRIDAY MORNING...WIND CHILL VALUES WILL DROP TO 20 TO 30 BELOW ZERO AT TIMES. SLIGHTLY WARMER TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED FOR THE WEEKEND...THOUGH HIGHS WILL STILL ONLY RANGE FROM 5 TO 15 ABOVE ZERO. LOW TEMPERATURES WILL BE AT OR BELOW ZERO THROUGH THE WEEKEND.

We're wondering if Gae and Jess will get out of the place on Monday. I think they are looking forward to some warmer weather.

On Friday we took off for Deadwood again, we are becoming regulars and the people where we stay remeber us now. We had a really nice night in Kevin Costners pub.

On Saturday we went to the Crazy Horse monument. It's the Indian answer to Mt Rushmore, carved in stone but much bigger. The picture of the indian on the horse in white below is what the finished sculpture will look like.




After Crazy Horse we moved across the Black Hills to Mt Rushmore. The displays on American history were really interesting and so were the local inhabitants who didn't seem to worry too much about us.






After Mt Rushmore we stayed the night in a town called Keystone. It was a really strange place, like a ghost town because all the shops and restaurants were 'Closed for the Season'. It's one of the places we'll go back to in summer to see what the difference is.




On Sunday we left Keystone and went to the Wind Cave National Park and did a cave tour which was great fun. The cave was on 4 levels and had a total of about 185 miles of surveyed tunnels. There was still a lot to be surveyed so no-one really knows how big or long it is.
There were also a lot of furry little friends on the surface, similar to Devils Tower.




On our way back into Gillette that night we just had to stop and take a picture of the sunset. Hope you like it.



Not sure how I'll go keeping up the blog over the next weeks with my travelling partner back in Aus. I haven't any travel plans and the weather isn't looking great but we'll see.