Tuesday, March 6 the third day of our trip was spent driving about 340 miles around Rapid City, SD.  Our first destination was to return to Mt. Rushmore.  On the way we stopped at the ranger station for the Black Hills to get our passport book stamped.  As I was looking at the map, I remembered that there was a scenic route to drive the get to Mt. Rushmore.  We swing east and picked up route 16A, also known as the Peter Norbeck Scenic Highway.

The byway is named for former South Dakota Governor Peter Norbeck who planned and surveyed most of the roads in the Black Hills.  The first sighting of Mt. Rushmore is in the distance.

A great feature about this road is that there are three one lane tunnels carved through the mountain.  As you drive through the tunnels, Mt. Rushmore is framed within the confines of the tunnel.

After the tunnels, the last section of the road has a series of 360 degree turns where you drive over a bridge and then under that same bridge as the road descends down the black hills.  It is hard to believe someone looked at this terrain and decided to build a road there.  It was easy to understand a sign when we first turned onto route 16A that told you that the road is not maintained in the winter.  Thankfully, it appears that this area of South Dakota has had a mild winter like we have back in Ohio. 

As you can see once again we are fighting the March tourist crowds.

We stopped along the road for one last picture before the parking lot.

A couple of disadvantages of it being the off season was that the Presidents trail and the sculptures studio were both closed.  As a result we were limited to the main area of the memorial.

As we exited Mt. Rushmore, we stopped at what is called the profile view.

Next we drove about a half an hour to the Crazy Horse Memorial.

This mountain sculpture was started in 1948 by a 40 year old artist named Korczak Ziolkowski.  He was chosen by the Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear who said "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes also."  Korczak had only $174 left to his name when he started the project.  He was a strong believer in the free enterprise system and that Crazy Horse should only be built by the interested public and not the taxpayer.  Twice he turned down offers of federal funding.    

Korczak also knew that the project was larger than any one lifetime and left detailed plans to be used with his scale models to continue the project.  Since his death in 1982, his wife, Ruth and seven of their ten children have continued the sculpture with the assistance of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation.

Leaving the Crazy Horse Memorial we drove north through the town of Deadwood and then through Spearfish canyon.  We didn't stop to take any pictures because we were trying to get to Devil's Tower before sunset.  We made it before sunset, but unfortunately our two days of good weather was ending.  There were some low level clouds and fog ahead of a cold front.  We still managed to take a few pictures.

There are 5 or 6 indian legends that explain how Devil's Tower came to be.  The easiest one to remember is that a little squaw was being chased by a bear.  She climbed onto a rock and began to pray to the gods to save her.  Her prayer was answered when the rock started to grow so big that the bear could not reach her.  The lines on the sides of the tower are from the bear clawing and trying to climb the sides of the rock.  On the way back to Rapid City we drove through Sturgis home to an annual motorcycle rally in the summer. This ended day three.  Tomorrow is planned to be mostly a travel day as we drive south through Nebraska and Colorado on our way to Moab, Utah.  Thanks for checking in with us on the blog and we enjoy reading the comments left here and on facebook.  Goodnight.