The Thompson ice fields are serene and beautiful. We've spent hours sitting out in the cool breezes watching mountains and clouds. At least until it got too cold (HA!). Valemount is a nice, uncrowded small town with a good grocery, nice restaurants (the Caribou Grill excellent), and a good vibe. The also have salmon spawning in Swift Creek, 1/2 mile from our site. Really amazing.
Also passed an exhibit foŕ the Invenergy project, a large wind farm. See your Daddy br a wind turbine blade?
Oil change in Billings, then on to Great Falls MT. It's wheat, hay and alfalfa up here -- with a backdrop of buttes and mountains. The fields are blond (wheat), tan (hay), reddish (wheat stubble), and green (alfalfa). They're serious about hay -- they even bale it up when they mow the road verges. They're harvesting now, and lots of big rolls of hay are still lying where they were baled, which gives a polka-dot look to the landscape.
And antlers and horns. And rocks (I couldn't figure out a way to afford the pink quartz rock AND transportation to Florida) (or even just the rock). Also did laundry, after we figured out that the Toyota dealership in Hot Springs that was going to do the truck's oil change was in Hot Springs ARKANSAS, not Hot Springs, South Dakota. Google kinda ignored the SD part of our query. Nice lady at the laundromat recommended "Burgers and Buns" as the best restaurant in town, which I thought said a lot about Custer. Well, wrong. Best food we've had in any restaurant since we left Tallahassee. Back to camp to collapse.
And onward to Custer, the town. Cute and full of bikers. They really love their buffaloes.
On to Crazy Horse. Bill in front of large model used to transfer measurements to mountain; Bill at museum center in front of mountain; A little closer view. Visible progress since we were here 3 years ago -- completed work ramps all the way up, removed stone to start blocking horse head, started work on hand. More millions of tons of rock removed. Progress is slow because 1) they're carving a MOUNTAIN; 2) mountain is not one solid rock and work has to proceed very deliberately for safety and to fit the sculpture into the mountain and 3) as the father of today's sculptors said, "don't blast off anything you might want to stand on later". It's a really remarkable story of an artist who had a dream and devoted his life to it -- and his family who are continuing his work. It will be the largest sculpture in the world when completed; it's already visible for miles and miles. The face is 80 feet high, the pointing finger they're currently working on is over 29 feet long. The horse's head will be 219 feet high. Faces on Mount Rushmore are 60 feet high. I'm just saying.
Yesterday was a walk first thing, then drive the Needles Highway. Guess which tunnel was the Needle's Eye?
