SOUTH DAKOTA

 Our first animal sighting! Pretty cool. They were kinda like deer or antelope but I really have no idea  what they really are. Tonya Evans thought they were called Okapis but when I googled that, just now, this is what came up for that! ha! I want to see one of THESE! :) They live in the Congo in Central Africa. WHOOP!
 

 Nice white butt, you're sticking out at me! Are you trying to tell me something??

 OH! He heard me talking about his butt! oops! :)

 Mount Rushmore. Okay. Crazy confession. As I was about to write about this, my mind blanked on what it was called! Seriously, I had to google it. And I'm sure others have done so too because my question came up before I finished it- "Monument of presidents heads in South Dakota"! LOL! okay, well.........

 What I was gonna say about Mt. Rushmore is this- I have never even had much desire to see these guys in stone. But when I found out we would be traveling right by them, I figured I would regret not at least stopping by to say "hey fellas!" So we did. And it was cool! I still don't know why the guy who made it, made it. Just because they were great presidents/men, I guess. Ha! Anyway, it was pretty cool- but we didn't spend tons of time there. We had more nature to see! :)

 Looking at Georgie Boy through the top of a little cave thingy! Cool photo, I thought!

 Can you read that sign? It says that this is the last model made by the sculptor in 1936- midway during the construction process. Because of a variation in the rock formation, plans did not include the lower portion of this model. Very interesting!

 The model. Standing in front of the model. :)

 Can you read it?

 Pretty cool! and pretty OLD!

 The view from the park entrance to Crazy Horse. It's a "new" monument being sculpted of Crazy Horse- the Native. What was it that he did?? Wow, I did graduate High School, I promise. :)

 You can see his face is already carved and they still have to carve out his body on top of his horse, and the horse. If you look closely you can see the horses head, roughly sketched on the stone out in front. According to my knowledgeable brother (who has learned some about this), The entire Mt. Rushmore will fit inside of Crazy Horse's head, when it's done! WOW! That's big!

But we only took a few photos from the gate entrance because it was even more expensive to get in here, then it was at Mt. Rushmore! WOW! This was good enough for us! :)