Sylvan Lake, South Dakota

We visited Sylvan Lake today. The rock formations are incredible here! I feel sorry for people stuck in cubicles and offices! We climbed the rocks and explored the whole area. This is also where “National Treasure II” was filmed.

Flag Mountain, South Dakota

We heard from local residents camping here that Flag Mountain was near by. We packed a lunch and went exploring. This is the mountain Custer picked to post a flag to notify his troops to keep marching to Wyoming. Wyoming is only about 20 miles from here. The mountain is just shy of 7000 ft high.

In this photo you can see the boat ramp at Deerfield Cove, which is part of Dutchman campground. It’s managed by our Camp Host buddy Roger.

Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota

We started our day at the Executive Order Grill for the “All you can eat” .99 cent pancakes!

Then it was on to the Borglum Museum in Keystone, SD for some background on what we were about to experience. They also have the Borglum Story at Mt. Rushmore. We’d recommend seeing both of them.

Finally, Mt Rushmore! This is another place where pictures can’t capture the true magnitude of the sculptures! 450,000 tons of rock were removed from Mt. Rushmore to create the faces. 90% was removed with dynamite, the remaining rock was removed by drilling and jack hammering. The finishing was done with small jack hammers and facing bits.

Here is the Borglum studio. This sculpture is what Borglum wanted Mt. Rushmore to look like when it was completed. The scale was 1ft to 12ft on the sculpture, he would transfer the measurements to the crews on the mountain. Borglum’s funding started to run dry because of World War II. His death in 1941 left his son Lincoln to conclude the project with the few remaining funds.

One thing we didn’t know about Borglum was that he had been commissioned to create a sculpture on Stone Mtn. in Georgia before Mt. Rushmore. The project became embroiled in controversy and he was fired before he could even begin work on the mountain itself. Borglum was so angry he destroyed all his models and fled before the Sheriff came!

Black Hills, South Dakota

Here’s a peek at the area we manage, we’ll post more later. It took a little bit of work to get it cleaned up and ready to go. Things are settling down now and we have more free time. These are some pictures of Deerfield Lake.

This is our new 'office' sign!

Our front yard!

Deerfield lake is a fisherman’s paradise

Our back yard!

This is our commute to work, the only traffic here are the antelope, deer and cougars. The game & fish officer tagged a 170 lbs cougar just down the road from us. So I let Jane walk the dogs now. >;p

Oh hail…. The Black Hills get some severe thunder storms, we had pea size hail. Some of the other counties had golf ball and baseball size hail!! Our NOAA radio goes nuts here at lest 3 times a day! Most of the time the days are in the low 70’s and the nights are in the mid 50’s.