Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and the Badlands

We visited the sights of western South Dakota today. The sculptures at Mt. Rushmore are truly impressive. It's amazing how rock at that scale can be carved mostly by using dynamite. We also visited the ongoing super-giant sculpture of Crazy Horse being carved out of a mountain of granite only 17 miles from Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills. The finished sculpture will consist of the torso of the native Amrerican chief Crazy Horse mounted on his horse. At this time only the face has been finished. We had to see this one from pretty far away because we didn't have time to take the bus that takes you to the base of the mountain. But we enjoyed visiting the exhibits in the museum of Native American culture. We rounded up the day by visiting Badlands National Park. Before going in, Stephanie thought they were called Badlands because they were boring, but she changed here mind when she saw them. They are called Badlands because they were extremely difficult to traverse by the early French explorers and besides, they could not be used to produce anything. They are an eerie landscape of eroded formations: buttes, canyons, cliffs, etc. with beautiful earth tones.
Ixchel has been holding up pretty well, but we can tell we're reaching the end of her tolerance for riding in a car. Now she says she wants to walk everywhere instead of going by car. Fortunately, we only have a couple of days left before we get to Illinois where will take an 11-day break.