Another 1,000 miles down

Driving through Wyoming I reached the next thousand mile mark, 15,000 total.

Before leaving South Dakota I visited several National Parks and Monuments; Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Mount Rushmore. I didn’t go into either cave because the tours were sold out for hours. But the visitors center at each told stories about their discovery and geology. Mount Rushmore was great to see in person. This giant American creation captures the visages of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln. While the scale is enormous, a man is much smaller than a nose, it seems smaller in person because the normal shots are always zoomed way in, just on the faces.

I also stopped to see the gigantic Crazy Horse Memorial where for more than 60 years a sculpture of the Native American Crazy Horse is being carved into a mountain. This colossal sculpture is the largest in the world at several hundred feet tall. The project is completely self funded by donations which makes the progress slow. The sculptor who started the project died in the 80s but his family continues it. There is no completion date set, and no one sees this ending anytime soon. Only the head, which is larger than all of Mount Rushmore, is complete. The body of the rider and horse still remain to roughed out with dynamite and then carved to completion.

Once I reached Wyoming I headed for the igneous Devil’s Tower, which is a logo for the state, appearing on many license plates. There are many different guesses at how this several hundred feet tall tower formed all based on its volcanic nature.

The Badlands

Badlands National Park again reinforced for me the power of water. Out of the rolling hills is carved a canyon on a smaller scale than the Grand Canyon. A slight difference in elevation, a nearby river, thousands of years of rain, snow, and wind have carved this amazing landscape.

The layer cake of of sedimentary rocks (many created from runoff from the Rockies) has been carved into a striped family of forms; spires, towers, and valleys. The alternating white and rust horizontal bands from the ground show where the now individual pieces were once connected. As far as the eye can see these horizontal bands link undulating mounds. Looking down from above these alternating colors make the Badlands look like a topographic map.

Another 1,000 miles down

I broke 14,000 miles as I drove from Glacier National Park (Montana) to Teddy Roosevelt NP (North Dakota) and then on to Badlands NP. Most of this thousand was covered as part of my Iron Butt ride. After the mountains in Montana I spent the rest of the time in gently rolling hills, most without trees.