Awesome Thanksgiving Day

My friend Travis and I planned to spend Thanksgiving week photographing in South Dakota. We started off in the Badlands before heading over to the Black Hills. One of our 'must' stop locations was Crazy Horse Monument. Travis is Ojibwe Indian and had never stopped at the Monument so this was an important visit for him. (read Travis' account here) Like Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial has gone thru alot of modernization over the years for much the same reason as Mt Rushmore, increased tourism. Instead of the stone architecture used at Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument is wooden and becomes part of the environment, instead of standing out from it.

They have assembled a wonderful museum of Indian culture at the monument so when you pay your entrance fee you're not only supporting the work on the monument you get entrance to this wonderful museum. In one part of the museum there are tribal and band flags overhead. Travis was able to find the Ojibwe tribal flag and the flags of other Minnesota bands but his bands flag was missing. I expect it will be there the next time I visit.

As we toured the grounds I learned they were open on Thanksgiving day since they were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner. We didn't talk about it much at the time since Thursday was a long way off and I kind of forgot it was Thanksgiving week because I was having so much fun. As Thanksgiving Day arrived we were happy to learn that we could go to the 11:00am seating, and we did. The buffet was with all the fixings, turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, 2 different dressings and every kinda pie you could dream about, I had Cherry pie.

For me it was just such a wonderful Thanksgiving spending it at Crazy Horse Monument with Travis. The thought of that day warms my heart.

Roger