This “Chapter” is all about Roadtrip!!!

I went to South Dakota 2 weekends ago with two of my Danish friends, which also happens to live in Minnesota! We left Minnesota in a cold snowy weather Friday the 27th of October where we drove about 5 hours and stopped by a pretty ugly but cozy Inn (Motel) in South Dakota. We got up early next morning and drove to the big national monument called Mount Rushmore, which is 4 presidents carved into a big mountain in the area called the Black Hills. I must admit that I didn’t know much about the monument before we left for the trip, but I found out that the 4 president who’s carved in the mountain is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, and that the monument tells the story of the birth, growth, development, and preservation of the US. The monument was so incredibly beautiful and I’ve never seen such a big craving before in my life. It was definitely worth the 8-10 hours in the car.

After we saw the Mount Rushmore, we all drove to another nearby craved monument, which a lot of people probably haven’t heard about, and I only heard about it through my host-mothers mother. It’s called Crazy Horse and it’s a monument which is still being built a family named Ziolkowski. They started this project about 70 years ago, and it’s actually only the head, which is craved. The whole monument is supposed to look like a Native American called Crazy Horse, which was a great warrior for the Indians. The monument itself wasn’t really great because it isn’t finished, but I really loved it because of the story behind it. What I learned at the museum, is that this monument “is to protect and preserve the culture, tradition and living heritage of the North American Indians“. The man who started this monument kind of sacrificed his life to it, and now the next generations of the family are working on it.

And now you’re probably wondering why it has taken the family such a long time to build this monument since the Mount Rushmore was built over 14 years – so did I. and there’s an amazing reason why; This family won’t accept money from the government, since they where the ones “destroying” the native Americans country. I find this absolutely brave and amazing. This just shows how many feelings and thoughts the builders of this monument has put into the project.

Enough about the cultural stuff. When we were done being cultural we drove to our Airbnb apartment. We lived in a basement in the largest city in South Dakota called Rapid City. It was a nice and cozy place, and we arrived just before the host was going to a Halloween party, and let’s just say, that the US loooove Halloween. I think we drove past 10 Halloween parties in the neighborhood we were living in.

Well, we wanted to go to town and get something to eat and maybe experience the town, but there wasn’t a lot to see. but one thing I did notice is, that on every intersection in the city there were placed 4 presidents, one in each corner. I found that super interesting, and later I found out the city is actually called ” the City of President”, which kind of fits pretty well since they have The Mount Rushmore Monument just beside the city. But we didn’t really find anything interesting to do at night, and we were all tired after the long drive, so we decided to go back to the apartment, where we just talked and laughed.

The day after we choose to drive home at 9am because we had a lot of things we wanted to see on the way home. We stopped by a town called “1880 Town”, which unfortunately was closed, but we still got a good look at it form the outside. Though I wished we could have seen it from the inside (they use it to film old movies).

We also stopped by another monument which was a big young native American girl. She’s 15m tall (50 feet), and she’s placed by the I-90 interstate with her back facing the Missouri River.

Summing up: We saw a lot of interesting and cultural things on this trip. I think it was totally worth it even though we probably drove for at least 16 hours, but the road trip itself was absolutely amazing and funny if you have the right company with you (which I definitely had).

Best, Silke, xoxo

#Travel