(Read the intro post for background on this trip)

After a semi-rough night of sleep in the tipi due to the high winds, we got up at 5:45am to watch the sunrise and get to Devils Tower before the crowds.

We got to the park and then did the 1.3 mile hike around the base. It was cool to see the tower up close and see how it different it was on each side. Up close, it’s really apparent that the tower is made up to columns of rock, some of which have calved away from the tower forming the rubble piles surrounding the tower, but apparently none has fallen in recorded history. Even though we were there early (before even the visitor center had opened), there were already climbers on the tower. The first climbers to summit the tower were two local farmers who did it in the 1890s as a publicity stunt, using a stake ladder. Wild.

After our early morning hike, we semi-randomly picked a place for breakfast in Sundance, Wyoming. This is the town which gave the Sundance Kid his name but is not where the movie festival is. The Bearlodge Bakery turned out to be a really excellent restaurant; we both had an amazing breakfast burrito covered in green chile sauce. Sadly, today was their last breakfast service. The owner was closing the restaurant and trying to find a buyer. She can’t get enough long-term employees to sustain the business. Really sad.

We then headed up to see the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore – two massive sculptures cut into the mountains. The Crazy Horse sculpture is still a work in progress. The last time I saw it (probably in the early 1980s) it was still being roughed out, with just a flat spot for the top of the arm and a hole under it. Now the face is complete and more of the sculpture is roughed out. You can see from this picture what the final sculpture is planned to look like and where the mountain is today.

The project was started in 1949 but hasn’t taken any money from the US government. It’s progressing very slowly. I have to admire their tenacity though.

Nearby, the Mount Rushmore facility has improved a lot since I saw it last in 1990, with much more parking and a bigger/nicer visitor center. The museum provided more information how they actually did the work and how the artist had to keep redesigning the sculpture as he found weak rock (including having to destroy much of the original Thomas Jefferson sculpture). I also learned the government’s funding priorities due to World War II and the death of the artist resulted in not completing the original plan of showing the Presidents’ torsos. Regardless of what I might think about carving up mountains, I am impressed by the scale, audacity, and invention it took to create these.

We spent the night in Rapid City, South Dakota. Since we didn’t have any planned burgers in Rapid City, a little internet sleuthing resulted in us going to Sickies Garage Burgers & Brews for dinner. The server mentioned they are famous for having a lot of different kinds of burgers, which they certainly do. Andrew had their eponymous Sickies Burger – a 1/3 pound burger with peppered bacon, fried egg, pulled pork, BBQ sauce, American cheese, an onion ring, and Frank’s Hot Sauce. I had a classic cheeseburger but made with an American Kobe beef patty. Both were excellent – good ingredients prepared with good execution. The meat tasted good, with a nice sear. The fries and tater tots we had were the standard frozen stuff, but they were fine. Sickies offers different seasonings for them like Cajun spice, so that’s nice. Super solid meal.

Andrew’s Sickie Burger