South Dakota Number 49 On My Bucket List

It was an interesting week and I thought that now is time to write about my quest to visit all 50 states and how close I am to seeing every state. That does not include the four countries that I have spent time visiting.

It seems that over the years I have been to most of the states, including the two that are the furthest to travel to. It seems that I had visited Alaska and Hawaii early in the journey. Those two states not only are the youngest in the country, but seem to have the most variety of scenery. I also have been to some of the states where I had experiences that were not as good.

Maybe the fact that a couple of the states were only visited because they were places where I did military training. They did result in my time in New Jersy, which resulted in spending time in New York, and Connecticut. While my time in Georga meant I could visit relatives in Florida. Now though I will stay in the present and write about state number 49.

South Dakota is number 49 and I only regret that I waited this long to see the beauty and most of the people that I met. There is always an exception, In this case it is politics, and not the way that people acted with other people. It seems that I also meet a person who attended the same college as I did and it was nice to talk about our same opinion about the success of the football team.

Scenery may be the reason that most people visit South Dakota, with Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial being the big draws. The Black Hills have a sense of going on forever, and they seem to be greener then anything on the west coast. It did rain during our trip if that is a normal occurrence it would explain the fact that everything is green with the exception of the few trees that were in the process of the normal fall color change.

Mt. Rushmore is the rare monument that is free to visit with the exception of a nominal parking fee of $10 ($5 for seniors) It’s possible that you could stay there for hours but it is great since you don’t need a lot of time to understand all of the time it took to create this masterpiece of art and engineering. Yes, you can have both together. Gutzon Borglum is the artist, and the work that he did is a job that would be very difficult to start today because of the current environmental limits.

The Crazy Horse Memorial is more unusual since the work to create this monument to the indigenous people of the country is being done basically on contributions and while also raising money to assist the members of that community. The charge to visit the work site and other money spent at the visitors’ center go to finishing the project. The work was started in 1948 and the sculptor and his family have continued the work with the project. It will probably not completed for another 40 years. Korczak Ziolkowski who was not only the artist but he was the engineer and contractor, and now his family are working to complete the work on the mountain. Now days there is also a University, for the people of the indigenous community.

Keystone SD is the closest city to the monuments and if you stay there you should remember that some of the city businesses close after the normal tourist season. Also, it seems that Pizza and Ice Cream are the two food staples that are most popular, and have the most outlets in the city. Yes, it looks like a tourist area but most seem to be local businesses and that is great.

Only a quick view of the state that has many other reasons to visit but this is only an opinion piece and not a chamber of commerce write--up.