Time is a pretty cool resource. It’s the only one we can spend, but cannot produce more of, no matter how hard you try. Yesterday, we got to witness some pretty cool monuments that really show the value of time.
We woke up in Cody, Wyoming in our cute little cabin hotel and took our morning meetings. I grabbed the free coffee (obviously), and then threw it away when we went to McDonald’s for breakfast instead.
The drive yesterday was long, open fields, and there was not much out there. It really wasn’t that long of a drive timewise though; it was only about 6 or 7 hours total.
It’s crazy how sparse cities are out west. We would go 50 miles between any sort of civilization, and a lot of those towns had populations of less than 100 people!
We learned that the population of the entire state of Wyoming is about 500,000 people, making it the smallest state in terms of people. Fun fact, the population of Raleigh, NC is just 100,000 less than that! Wyoming is almost double the size of the entire state of North Carolina in terms of land, and their population is only a little more than 1 of our cities. Wild!
You won’t be surprised then if I told you the drive was pretty empty. It was a really interesting picture, you certainly don’t have those kinds of open stretches in the southeast.
The drive between cities goes pretty fast, though, because all the highways out here have a speed limit of 80mph haha!
Eventually, we needed gas, and we were given a grand surprise! There it was in the middle of nowhere Wyoming! Caribou!
Woohoo! We grabbed coffee and hot chocolate, which gave us the boost we needed for the rest of the drive.
Our first official stop was at the coolest monument we’ve seen, Crazy Horse.
It’s actually not finished yet; they have finished his face to move onto his hand. They have been working on it since the 1940s. I won’t go into all the details, but I highly suggest researching the Crazy Horse Memorial. It was really neat!
I said I wouldn’t do all the details, but I can’t not say something. So here is the super quick version: Crazy Horse was a Lokota Indian warrior in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He was stabbed in the back and killed on a US base during a time of truce. Very dirty. Way later, an Indian chief asked a man named Korczak Ziolkowski if he would construct a memorial for Crazy Horse. It was not meant to memorialize only Crazy Horse, but all Indians, showing that they too have great heroes.
The whole memorial has very grand plans to create this entire park filled with Native American culture for all to learn and appreciate. Afterall, they lived here way before any of us, so we ought to learn about them too.
The monument itself is going to be the biggest carving in the world when it’s done! What I think is perhaps the coolest thing about it, though, is that Korczak devoted his entire life working on it knowing full well he would not finish it in his lifetime. To this day his grandchildren and great-grandchildren have continued working on it. I think that’s pretty honorable.
I really really hope it is finished in our lifetime. We look forward to going back one day and traveling to the top of his arm to get that grand view of the Black Hills. We also look forward to the day we can take our own children to it and show them how much different it is than the first time we saw it.
We said goodbye to the statue and added it to the list of places we want to return to.
Our next stop was just a mere 30 minutes away. Mt. Rushmore!
This was one of those places that was definitely cool to see, and we didn’t want to miss it. Korczak Ziolkowski actually worked on it for a while too before devoting his life to Crazy Horse. We felt like, as Americans, it was definitely important to see Mt. Rushmore, and it was totally worth the visit!
Driving in we kept trying to remember which presidents were actually up there, feeling a little ashamed when we realized we forgot Roosevelt.
The carved heads of those four great men were much smaller than Crazy Horse, but still nonetheless incredible to witness.
We are very glad we made the stop; though, we probably won’t go back unless it was with our children. We took our photos and moved on down the road.
Our final stop was only 45 minutes down the road in Rapid City, South Dakota.
The hotel there was our sketchiest stay yet, but it was still nice. Apparently, all their housekeepers didn’t show up for work, so the hotel owners were cleaning the rooms!
We found this really cool restaurant we wanted to eat at with sausage mac n cheese! It sounded so good! As we drove there we couldn’t help but notice it seemed like Rapid City was not really all that grand. It looked a little run down.
Until we hit main street.
Main street was where all the hubbub went. It was really cute and super busy. However, the restaurant was an hour long wait! Apparently every Thursday they have live music in the park on main street where it seems like every citizen in the city shows up to eat and hangout. It was actually really cool to see that community!
But not cool enough to wait an hour for food, lol.
We went to Five Guys instead, which is always delicious! Then we ran off to the hotel and went to bed.