Mt Rushmore, Dandelion Ridge and Plan B

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Just past Custer City, I saw my first glimpse of Mt. Rushmore and pulled over at a scenic turnout. There was an elderly couple in front of me using their IPad as a camera, taking turns posing as Mt Rushmore hovered behind them.  I offered to take a photo of them together. I told them it doesn't count unless you are both in it at the same time. 

She laughed and handed me her IPad, "Dear, do you know how this works?"

"Yes mam, I have one in the car"

"Ok then"

 I zoomed it in, took the photo, then pulled it up and showed  it to them. 

"You know", the husband said "there is another way to crop that in"

She interrupted him, "that's ok honey, it's a good photo"

They thanked me and turned to walk back to their car and I swung my Cannon digital camera up to focus on my first shot of Rushmore.

"Dear", she said as she walked back towards me, "Do you want me to take your photo, so it counts?"

I laughed and said "Sure, that would be great" 

I showed her the button and handed her the camera. She took a nice shot, so I can prove I was actually there.

It was an amazing monument. In fact if you look up the word "monumental" , the photo next to it would be Mt Rushmore. Took 400 workers, fourteen years to carve it out with jack hammers and dynamite. There were plenty of skilled workers in the area working the mines in the late 1920s and 1930s. They were making fifty cents an hour. So Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, offered them more. It was hazardous work to hang off a 500ft high granite cliff from a bosons chair, dangling by a pencil thick cable,lowered by two guys operating hand crank winches. Heat in the summer is 80-90 degrees, add in the radiant effect off the rocks, and that  boosts it to over 100 degrees.  While down in the mines, it was downright cool in the mid 50s. So Borglum paid them sixty cents an hour. Typically, only thirty to forty men worked a day  with only five or so guys dangling off the side. But there was turnover,  no work in the winter time due to harsh South Dakota winters, and some guys wanted year round work. Still after all those years of high ropes, jack hammers and dynamite there were no fatalities. This kind of granite is projected to wear only one inch in 10,000 years. There was an amazing amount of technique in sculpting and planing this venture. You should come out here some time and see it -make sure you are in the shot-you'll want it to count.

So I made my way down highway 365 to the Wind Cave National Park. Beautiful drive skirting the Black Hills National Forrest, which looked pretty darn green to me, but with clouds building they did seem to take on a darker, dare I say, black matt finish. I pulled into Elk Mountain Campground and found a nice site just below a small rise and down wind from prevailing breeze. I made a quick hot dinner and took my bowl of clam chowder up to the rise. It was a small knoll with a downed Ponderosa Pine sprawled across the prairie grasses and a view of several valleys and rolling ridges to the north.  A steady moderate wind was skimming up the hill towards me and suddenly I was in the midst of dandelion flurries zooming towards me. Some completely intact balls with stringy little tentacles, reached out and grabbed onto any plant stem they could grasp, like they were caught in a torrent of flooding air mass whipping them along about four feet of the ground,  following the land contours.  I dodged, ducked, and weaved  so I wouldn't get one in the face. One little fragmented ball  sailed right by me -four perfect little feathers holding hands as they rode that current to a new spawning ground. So since I am in the west, sort of, I decided to name my spot Dandelion Ridge to commemorate the unsung heroes of dandelion feathers and their quest of propagation.

A few minutes later, the sky began to darken and I happened to get a brief signal on my IPhone, so I checked the weather and an alert popped up. Severe thunderstorm warning with 2" hail. Then they listed names of towns and miles between towns, which of course doesn't help when you don't remember where you saw the small town of Buffalo or which direction is Rapid City in relation to me now? So I did the only wise thing I could think of, I drove a half mile out to highway 365,  pulled over just as a Pronghorn Antelope trotted across the road and ambled down the valley. I crossed over and climbed up a small rise. Felt like  I was with the indians in Dances with Wolves as they snuck up the backside of the hill to peer over and spy on the buffalo grazing in the valley below.  No buffalo, but nice green valley with some dark clouds cramming close together as they moved across my position towards the east. Clearly, this is a great opportunity for some camera work. I zoomed in with my telephoto, then swapped out lenses and used my wide angled lens and then I needed to kneel down to steady myself against increasingly gusty winds. Suddenly, the clouds turned that seriously creepy black like a three day old black eye. Kind of dark and greasy, then  whitish wisps began peeling off the cloud bottoms. The wind shifted and I looked up.  Oh crap, it is headed my way. I scurried down the hill and drove back to camp to reconfigure my car. There was no tent raising effort now. Time for Plan B. Sleep in the car.  It's a Prius hatchback and the back seats were already down for all my camping stuff. I started moving boxes into the front seats and shoving things around.  Just then a U.S. Park Ranger came zipping up the road in his pick up truck and leaned out the window. 

"We got notice of tornado warning in our area"

"How certain are you for our area?"

 He said, "Well, I don't think we will get a tornado, but could get two inch hail, so we are opening  up the visitor center."

"Ok, I am on my way."

If hail starts crashing thru my car windows, I wanted another place to protect my cameras and other valuables, so I got in my car and headed out.  As I was driving that half mile, I could see those clouds turn blacker, thunder was rumbling, the bottoms started to lean towards the ground and dark cloud vapors curled and stretched into gnarly fingers reaching out towards our line of cars headed towards refuge. Lightening flashed in all kinds of directions. Vertical, horizontal with an zig zag in an  upwards incline and my favorite, I call Poseidon's  Spear, where a single bolt zaps down with two or three fingers shooting out from the end like a multi prong spear. About 15 campers went to the Visitor Center and several of us stood out under the long, low porch and watched the show. Rain pounded down, then pea size hail bounced off the ground and the flash and boom got closer together. It was quite the demonstration and it was pretty much over in about thirty minutes. Once the lightning cleared the area, we all got in our vehicles and headed back.

 So here I am tapping away on my IPad, cozy in my car.  It's set up nicely now, sort of like a quarter berth on a sailboat with big port lights surrounding me, as the rains tinkles down and the thunder recedes in the distance.

Signing off for now.