Day Three - How The Big Texan tried to kill me...

Mount Roosevelt - a small tower at the top of a very big hill.

Have you ever gone to a place and thought "Gee, am I going the right way"? or "Hey, would anyone really mean to put this here"?

Yeah - that is what happened.

Let me explain.

The Big Texan and I saw this picture. It looked like a great little monument for a president. We thought it would be nice to visit.

We asked in town about directions for getting there.

It is on Mount Roosevelt Road. Simple - right?

yeah - right.

We turned on a road labeled "Mount Roosevelt". It happened to be an unpaved road. Completely unpaved. It was rock and gravel. There were no guard rails. The guard rail thing wouldn't have been a problem, except that it was up on a mountain. Ok - just a hill - but a big dang hill (over 5,000 feet). I was on the side with the severe drop off.

It is one thing to be driving up a hill with a drop off. It is another thing entirely to be RIDING up the same hill (without having control of the vehicle and being closer to the edge of the drop off). Oh - yeah - and there was no guard rail... at all. (and now I really don't trust the Big Texan's spatial distances - especially not on the top of a hill).

I didn't like it.

The only thing that made it half way OK - was that I had knitting in my lap.

NO - I wasn't knitting- are you crazy? I couldn't have knit garter stitch on that edge.

I was gasping about every 200 feet. and saying "Oh my God - that is steep."

It really didn't help that the Book on tape we listened to - just had a scene where a vehicle rolled off the side of a mountain...

nope - just didn't help.

at all

We got to an opening in the wilderness. There was a small building (labeled restroom) and a tiny parking lot.

After driving past this interesting spot - we realized that was probaly the place to get out and see the memorial.

We drove back and parked and looked around.

There was a deer trail to our right - and looking up about 200 feet there was a tiny plaque that said "Mt Roosevelt".

That was signage? We weren't really sure and since this wasn't covered at the visitor center - we decided to take a chance and go up the trail.

This was where the "Gee, am I going the right way"? REALLY came into play.

After hiking up for about 15 minutes (but it felt like 2165 minutes), we wondered if anyone would put a monument in this totally wild completely inaccessible place.

The Big Texan was ready to turn around.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that when I am ready to turn around and give up, I am about 300 yards from my goal.

So, I wasn't going to turn around for anything. I knew that as soon as I did, the monument would have been just ahead.

The Big Texan thought I was nuts when I said "In for a penny, in for a pound". But when he realized that it meant I was commited to end, he thought "Let's go". and decided that dying by overexertion and exhaustion was better than being shown up by a girl.

After reaching the top of the hill - we saw through the trees - the monument.

There it was - our "Holy Grail".

It really did look like a turrent from a castle.

We were disappointed that it was completely inaccessible and barred up. You cannot even get to the base of it because it is on a pedestal about 7 feet tall.

We did manage to scale the base and walked all around the perimeter looking at a beautiful view of the Black hills.

You could tell that there weren't many people who visited this memorial because the area was quite clean and undisturbed. But some folks had to visit, because the trail was clear and easy to follow.

There were even some picnic tables nearby, but they didn't look well used.

We hiked back down the hill to our car and began the descent.

It was almost as frightening as the trip up.

The road down was not as well maintained (if you can call gravel "maintained") and probably not as traveled. I was worried I was going to see a tree dropped over the road making it impassible and forcing us to back all the way up a mountain and down again.

But we did make it to the bottom and back to 'mini-Las Vegas'.

We left Deadwood and drove back to Rapid City.

The drive up the mountain forced us to wash our car (really - I didn't want all that dust on my yarn). After the car wash, we checked into the hotel and decided to take advantage of the rest of the daylight and drive to Crazy Horse monument.

I didn't know the whole story of this monument before - but it is completely privately funded and astonishing in its magnitude.

We had planned on going to see Mount Rushmore the next day, so we drove past it on our way to the hotel to see how pretty it would look at night.

It was beautiful and we were glad just to catch a glimpse. We knew we were going to return the next day.

More to follow...