Wild West adventure continued.

After arrival in Keystone, we set off to explore the town.
Population is 337 when tourists are not in town.
Keystone is the gateway to Mount Rushmore.  

On our exploration of the town, we discovered some chainsaw artists.

Just one of the many chairs scattered around the town. A lot of wood carving for sale, I could just see one of these in my yard.

Mount Rushmore was the vision of Gutzon Borglum who commenced the sculpting in the early 1900's.

That evening we dined at Ruby's, de'core resembled a saloon and brothel from the Wild West. 

I had bison stew in a bread bun.,..delicious.

The next morning, our first stop was Mount Rushmore. 

What an amazing fest of ingenuity,  unless you have seen this mountain with the president's head carved, it is hard to imagine the enormity of what was achieved with such limited machinery.

We had a couple of hours here and did the long walk, so that we could get every perspective, the air was a little thin, due to altitude, so plenty of water and gradual steps.

After our visit to Mount Rushmore we went to the Crazy Horse monument, which was commenced in 1948 and still a work in progress.

This will be what it looks like when finished.

After this visit we proceeded onto Deadwood, here we visited Tatanka, Kevin Costner built this  museum after his movie, "Dancing with Wolves"ar a cost of $5,000.000,

This is a sculpture depicting native Americans, hunting the bison into a pit, at a cost of $3,000,000, Tatanka was established to help preserve the bison population.

After this visit we went on a Deadwood tour in an old school bus, and was entertained with a running commentary from our bus driver.

Our school bus.

Gateway to Deadwood, population 1,260 and has as many poker machines, council earns $35,000,000 in gambling royalties.

Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickock was shot. 

More to follow