Today was the nicest weather we have seen since getting to the Black Hills, getting up the low 70's and staying sunny most of the day. We got a decent early start at 8AM, left the dogs in the coach again, and headed to Crazy Horse.
I was disappointed with Crazy Horse. It has a $12 per person entry fee and another $4 for catching the bus to get close enough to the monument to take pictures. The $12 entry fee is for allowing you into the buildings that house genuine Native American artifacts, a theater, a gift shop and most importantly, the rest rooms. That's an expensive pay toilet.
You are not allowed to walk the ? mile to the monument; you must take the bus. Although the bus tour guide was quite informative and humorous, I feel the bus ride should have been included in the entry fee.
My disappointment with the monument is due to the fact that they have been working on this monument since 1948, 71 years, and only have part of the face and left arm cut. Granted, this is a massive monument, considerably larger than Mt. Rushmore, and when finished, will be the largest monument in the world, several times larger than the Egyptian pyramids and Sphinx. But they admit that at the rate they are going, it won't be finished for another 100 years. No one was working on it while we were there. They are proud of the fact that they have received no state or federal funding for this project; all their monies come from the public admission fees. But to charge $16 per person to see a monument from a quarter mile away that is roughly 25% finished is excessive. Yes, it is much larger than Mt. Rushmore, but I was moved when I saw the latter and felt robbed when viewing the former. And since both Judy and I have Native American heritage, I can honestly say this opinion is not racially motivated.
From there, we decided to skip Custer State Park until tomorrow and drive to Mt. Rushmore. In retrospect, I feel it was an excellent idea to go from one monument to another so we could make a more accurate comparison. We chose to skip Custer for now because we spent considerably more time at Crazy Horse than we thought we would and assumed correctly that we would do the same at Rushmore. The drive between the two was great; I love driving on mountain roads and it gave me a chance to see what our new Equinox could do in terms of handling and pickup. It excelled in both and I was quite impressed in this SUV with a 1.5L engine that I bought for my wife.
If I had to describe Mt. Rushmore in one word, I think I would use "awesome." Regardless of how patriotic you are, seeing this monument and learning how it came to be will drop your jaw. We opted for the audio self guided tour and spent close to two hours walking the path in front of the monument. One reason I felt this monument was more impressive than Crazy Horse was because this monument was completed in 14 years. There are a lot of steps to climb and we both learned just how out of shape we are since both of us recently had surgeries from which we just recovered. Our cost was minimal; we got a 50% discount on parking and paid $5 instead of $10, and we paid $10 for both of us to have audio wands instead of the normal $25 because we had the senior national park pass. Since we only paid $10 for this pass before the price rose to $80, it has paid for itself many times over just in the past week. But back to the subject, I strongly recommend seeing Mt. Rushmore to anyone that visits the Black Hills. Plan on being there for at least two to three hours to fully appreciate the site.
I haven't heard from the RV dealer I wrote to about the jack solenoid warranty replacement, so I'll call them tomorrow to determine if they can do the work. I'm glad all the jacks are deploying because we are having trouble with the coach continually sinking on one side due to the rain this area has received. I took four 2x12's with us in the event we needed more than the plastic jack pads we use, and have used all of them, two under the jack that has the bad solenoid. I have wondered if, since we know the valve is bad, maybe it is leaking and allowing the jack to retract a little, but every time I look at it, it appears to be deployed the same amount as the last time, so I'm apt to believe it's the soil and gravel sinking. Speaking to the management about it, he seemed to understand the problem, as though this isn't the first time he's seen it, and he told me he has extra blocks to put under the jacks if I need them. When we returned this afternoon from our journey, the list was so bad, I had to turn off the refrigerator until I could get it leveled, and then reinstall the Dish antenna because its position had changed on top of the coach.
I had an interesting conversation with my next door neighbor when we returned today. He has a '99 Gulf Stream, about the same size as ours. He says he's got 90,000 miles on it and has never pulled the engine cover off of it. I asked him if he has ever changed the plugs and wires and he said no, it doesn't have wires, with each plug having a dedicated coil, and the plugs are still going strong, so he isn't going to fix it if it isn't broken. Well, more power to him. I wish I had that kind of luck with mine.
Tomorrow we will pick up where we left off today, driving the same route but a little farther to Custer State Park and if we have time, down to Wind Cave. This will complete our bucket list of things to see at this location other than spending a half day in Deadwood and Lead, which we can do on Saturday before we begin packing up to drive to our next location, Ten Sleep, WY. I am sure that driving a gasser and towing four down will prove interesting when traversing the Big Horn Mountains.
Bill, thank you for the kind words. Tonight, Judy and I decided we were hungry for fish so we headed down to the office where we were given rods and reels and told to catch our own fish. The pond is so well stocked, it took Judy and I both less than a minute to hook fish. She caught a 12" and I caught a 15" rainbow trout. They prepped and fried the fish for us and we had a good meal. The dogs got jealous when they smelled fish on our breath.