As if Mount Rushmore wasn’t grand enough, we headed for the Crazy Horse Memorial, the world’s largest sculpture. To give you an idea of its scale, Mount Rushmore can fit within the carved horse head of this Black Hills Colossus. Over fifty years ago, Korczak Ziolkowski began what became his life long quest, the carving of a monument to all Native Americans embodied in the spirit of Crazy Horse, a Lakota warrior who fought for his people and never surrendered to the broken promises of the U.S. government.

Already an accomplished sculptor, he lived a childhood dream when in 1939 he assisted Gutzon Borglum at Mount Rushmore and learned the secrets of explosives engineering. He returned to Connecticut to complete a 13 1/2 foot sculpture of Noah Webster. Soon thereafter, he enlisted and participated in the landing on Omaha Beach. Wounded, he returned home and henceforth dedicated his life to the Crazy Horse Memorial.

For the first five years Korczak worked alone. The footage of Korczak is priceless. He tells of his difficult efforts. The kids’ and my favorite story is of his ongoing struggles with a cantankerous air compressor. He would start it up, climb halfway up the mountain carrying all of his equipment when he would hear the compressor sputter or in his words, “Kaput...kaput...kaput.” He said one day he had to restart it nine times.

At the age of forty, he married and with his wife, raised a large family of ten children, seven of whom are still involved in the project. After thirty six years of effort on the mountain, Korczak passed away.

His wife and children have carried his dream forward, not only continuing work on the monument, but developing a visitor center, museum and education center. Although offered government grants and loans, they have turned them down, preferring to set up their own nonprofit organization, relying on donations and the proceeds from the museum, gift shop, restaurants and other offerings at the monument site.

On the fifty year anniversary of the monument, they completed the face of Crazy Horse and are now working steadily on the horse. It may be another fifty years before the project is finished and will be as much a monument to perseverance, passion and grand ideas as it is to the Native American spirit.

We were monumented-out by the time we left Crazy Horse. On the previous evening, Patt and Bob had spotted a promising looking restaurant in Custer. The Sage Grill turned out to be the single best restaurant we had thus far encountered on the trip and featured the best children’s menu I have encountered at any restaurant. Bob and I both enjoyed buffalo burgers and the kids found a new love, grilled chicken with Parmesan ranch sauce.

It is a pet peeve of mine that most restaurants feature the worst food when it comes to kids menus. Hot dogs, french fries, chicken strips are all foods which are featured on a list, “The Ten Worst Foods for Children” and it seems 99.9% of the menus feature those items. To find a menu where every single item was actually good for kids, plus the adult selections featured fresh ingredients and good recipes gained five stars and five happy faces that evening.

We returned home by the stream. I had contracted a cold during the last week of our trip which had progressed into raging mode by this time. While Patt and Bob stayed out by the fire and counted meteors, the kids and I headed for bed.