Pics of my Trip north to South Dakota and Iowa(56k beware)

Raziaar

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Hey guys. I took probably like 400 pictures, but i'm only gonna show a little more than 50 here. Be warned, these pictures are at 1024x768 resolution, and most are between 200-300 kb in size, so it'll take forever to load if you're not on broadband.

Now... lets begin :) Oh and there are some cool pictures of the Crazyhorse Monument that is not far from Rushmore, so be sure to look at those!



First stop in South Dakota. The mammoth site. Apparently worlds largest mammoth research center. I didnt have any time unfortunately to go on the tour inside, so just stopped in the gift lobby. www.mammothsite.com

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Giant mammoth replica of the actual bones that were excavated near the site.

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A picture of the Mammoth's Big head.

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Huge tusks this thing has!

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This mammoth has a giant booty!

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The feet of this thing are pretty cool. I'm only showing pics of the back feet(I think these are the back)

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I had to take this picture. Its a little display of a mammoth getting owned by nature.

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Custer, South Dakota. This is the sign that is up near my property. Its not a big property, and it was once owned by my great grandma back a long time ago. Now my dad is paying the bills on it.

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The plaque for a statue of "Chief" in town square.

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And the statue. Yeah, I know these things are weird looking. But its art!

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The plaque for george.

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And the Statue.

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This is the courthouse of Custer. From back in the late 1800's. This thing, the last time I went 6 years ago, was open and I got to tour the inside. It was closed for the thanksgiving holiday when I arrived. When I went in it way back then, it was pretty cool and creepy. Wood everywhere inside the courthouse, and the small tiny almost dungeonesque jail cells down below. WIth those creepy humanoid wax statues in all of em. Was also people outside replaying a rendition, firing guns at each other from an older time(blanks, and not this time I went).

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We went up to our property spot, and the first thing we noticed, was that there was a mother and young(we think) deer sitting near where the old house used to be. The area was one of the few grassy clearings around, and there were bedding marks all around of where deer had rested. Not to mention the deer poo.

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More deer Pictures.

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There was an old car on the property from back in the 50's I think it was. Had been part of the families.

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Another two pictures of the deer. The second one being from when I climbed up a large rockface, and saw them on the otherside of the hill looking up at me from the shadow(was just one, the other walked over a bit later). The pic was zoomed as far as it could go, cause it was a long ways away.

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Pic from the climb, looking out over the city.

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Another pic, looking out over the black hills from where I was perched.

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Two pictures from the ground level of the property, showing basically what it consists of. Small rocky outcroppings, and lots of trees and billions of pine needles.

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"My lands are where my dead lie buried" --- Crazy Horse

Now for the crazy horse pictures! Man, nobody knows when they are going to complete this MASSIVE memorial. It was started back in the 40's, and a ton has been done to it, but sooo much more needs to be done. Its so massive, that the entire mount rushmore monument, with the faces, can fit inside the head of crazyhorse when its finished. The sculpture, who has since passed away, and his family carries on his work, has refused all donations from the government, turning down 10's of millions of dollars which would have helped it be finished much faster. However, he believed in free enterprise, and his family, and didn't want that type of help. Pretty much the whole thing has been funded from donations and purchases made at the gift shops, and admission fees etc to get onto the grounds. They have thousands of cool things there, and we spent a lot of time that night there. Too much, I think. I spent most of my time walking around and taking photographs of everything.

Okay, so the pictures.

Crazyhorse from a great distance, in the afternoon.

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Closeup of his face, and you can see the size of it. With the scaffolding and everything. The thing is amazing when they carve it out using dynamite, especially the nightshot videos I saw at the orientation video.

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A painting for the beginning of the memorial's start. You can see what the mountain looked like before everything started.

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One of the dozens of cool native american statues in the facility.

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This was a cool sculpture. It was called Death Song, I believe.

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A small small statue of crazy horse, with me taking a picture of it through the glass towards the actual monument.

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I went outside to get to another one of the facilities. THey had this neat "Nature Gates" for blackhills outside.

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As well as an awesome sculpture of fighting stallions.

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The large 1/34th scale statue(I think) of crazyhorse, as well as the full scale thing in the distance. Sunset is coming.

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On the smaller statue, is the poem made from the guy who started it all, Korczak Ziolkowski.

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Sunset falls on the crazy horse memorial.

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Part of the outside walkway of the visitor facility.

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The sunset from out in the parking lot.

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Crazyhorse at night! I've never seen it at night before. THey have it all lit up, and I think it looks cool, from all the shadows.

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The rushmore memorial had closed unfortunately when I got there, either that or it was already closed for the holidays... but still, the only shot I was able to get, was at night. and they are a bit blurry, cause I had brought along my crappier tripod. But anyways, still... night shots! Remember, this thing is sooooo much smaller than crazy horse.

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After all this, we drove to Iowa, to go gambling. We drove around town to visit our old house there that we lived in for a year before moving to Texas(previously lived in alaska). This one here, was a high school from the 1890's... Looks like a castle, pretty cool!

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Okay... these following pictures(not the rest of them, mind you) are from the Trinity Heights in Sioux City, Iowa. This place is rather beautiful, even if you don't like religion. They have all these amazing statues... dozens of them, and I took pictures of every single one. I'm only going to show a couple here. This is the website for the place. http://www.sctrinityheights.org/


Saint Michael the archangel, who is at the entrance of the place.

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This is a gigantic Statue of mary.

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I took alot of angles of this statue, cause I liked it alot. Its a monk with a bird.

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Giiiiiant Jesus statue. This thing is as massive as the Mary Statue. I'm not sure how big they are, but I wanna say... 90 feet is something I heard?

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Mother Theresa Statue. It almost looks a little spooky. Oh and by the way, when I was out for an hour taking all these pictures, it was FREEEEEEEZING outside.

http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/9190/45trinitytheresa8tw.jpg/img]



This was the first casino we went to. Showing it from the riverside. Its a riverboat casino. But you wanna know what? This is where the downturn for my trip came... because they changed all the ages from the 7 or so casinos I went to from south dakota, nebraska, and kansas... to 21. They were 18 a couple years ago. THey carded me and wouldn't let me in, cause i'm only 20. 6 months until 21. ****ing sucked!

[img]http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/8179/46iowariverboatcasino8vu.jpg

Before all the sadness set in of not being able to gamble, I captured these two pictures(well actually many more, but these were two of the best.) of a squirrel. He was posing for me, the awesomely cute little guy!

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They had a lewis and clark expedition trail information center here, with a pretty cool statue of Lewis and Clark, and the dog Seaman. I forget who's trusty companion that was. Either Lewis or Clark.

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We went to another casino, and they had this awesome native statue up. I wish the sunlight wasnt the way it was. But irregardless, I got 6 angles of it, and 20 pictures worth.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5817/50nativestatue2ax.jpg/img]



Well, closing up here... just a picture of some farmland near wintertime, if none of you have seen it. Heh heh.

[img]http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/2224/51farmland1cu.jpg



There's actually a pretty crazy store to this last one. We were down Between Wichita and Topeka, and the rain had gotten SO bad, that it was coming down in torrents, with the wind blowing sideways across the road so hard, that I had to slow the vehicle down to 5 miles per hour to avoid all the cars around me. The rain was so bad, I couldn't see more than 2 feet in front of me... and holy hell, it was intense. My heart was racing a mile a minute, cause it got so bad, so unbelievably fast. Happened a second time too. THe picture is of the aftermath of it, of the clouds which I thought were beautiful. Taken from the inside of the vehicle though, not by me... because I was the one driving.

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That crazy horse memorial looks awesome. i couldn't quite understand how big it is from the pictures though.
 
Jangle said:
That crazy horse memorial looks awesome. i couldn't quite understand how big it is from the pictures though.


From wikipedia. When complete, the sculpture will be 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high. By comparison, the heads of Mount Rushmore are 60 feet (18 m) high.

Also... A five-room house will be able to fit inside a nostril the warrior's steed.
 
Ya I had seen something on the Crazy Horse statue a couple years back and ever since then I have been really wanting to see it finished. A statue that big is about as grand as you can get.

Squirrel = teh cuteness :D
 
The Mullinator said:
Ya I had seen something on the Crazy Horse statue a couple years back and ever since then I have been really wanting to see it finished. A statue that big is about as grand as you can get.

Squirrel = teh cuteness :D

We'll all probably be dead before its finished, unfortunately. But yeah... its so awesome, I love it.
 
Raziaar said:
We'll all probably be dead before its finished, unfortunately. But yeah... its so awesome, I love it.
I have already put a down payment on a cryo sleep tank. I won't have to worry... Unless someone pulls the plug while I'm in it. :eek:
 
beautiful wooded land.. id love to live around there, i used to live in nebraska actually, but nothing close to that x_x. that was a great crazyhorse statue, and squirrel is teh sechs
 
thats awesome i really like that mountain with the face engraved in it looks cool
 
wow, great pics. The ones of the deer are very cool. No pic of the property tho?
 
Shakermaker said:
wow, great pics. The ones of the deer are very cool. No pic of the property tho?

That pretty much is the property. Well. Okay, not exactly. Most of it is wooded, rocky area, that goes up in the hills a bit. However, there are the remains of a house, an outhouse, that car of hourse, a fence, and some other debris on the property. Mostly though, its just nature.

I have some other pics since you wanted to see em.

This one shows the fence, with the old old outhouse in the background. That concrete frame you see, isnt from the house. I think it was a secondary sort of cabin structure that my dad and his cousins slept in or something. I cant remember.

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The following is the fence as well, and the big pile of branch debris, is where the city tore down some trees and put them there. It was where the frame of the house used to be. I think they were diseased trees, from some sort of bugs, and they put em there since it seemed like a logical spot.

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Nice picture of the rocks and stumps, and fallen trees etc.

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This was a weird sight for me. Apparently a mini little trash place where they used to throw all their cans, in one spot. Way back then, there werent any trash dumps or deliveries or something. Kind of an eyesore, but interesting nonetheless. Its in one tiny spot, in kind of a recess. The cans are soooo damn rusted and eaten through from the decades of weather wear.

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Last picture, showing in the distance some nearby neighbors houses, etc. Their land is much smaller I think, and right on the edge of our property.

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Very nice pictures, but I saw some dingleberries on the deer.

What kind of camera?
 
Qonfused said:
Very nice pictures, but I saw some dingleberries on the deer.

What kind of camera?

Probably cause just finished laying these bad boys, which I found.

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As for my camera. I have a digital camera. Fuji Finepix s5000 Bought it a couple years ago.
 
you have a bigger version of that last pic, with the sun peeking through the clouds?
i'd love to make it my background, it's a damn fine pic
 
Icarusintel said:
you have a bigger version of that last pic, with the sun peeking through the clouds?
i'd love to make it my background, it's a damn fine pic

Yeah. I do. I just shrunk it. I have it in 1280x960 or 1024, I think.

Let me get it. Also... you do have some visible smudges from the windshield, but not too noticable. Can be photoshopped out easily.

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9692/bigclouds7bs.jpg
 
That's quite an honor! Even though I wasn't the one who took that particular pic!
 
Great pics there, Raz. Very nice. Hey, that deer looks like it has a hole in the head!
And I really do like the sky/highway one the most. Could I get that in 1280x1024 format, please? :p
 
Wow. Awesome pics man, that picture from after the storm is my new desktop backround.
 
You know, the storm pic, I had the SAME experience. I was driving up to Plattsmouth Nebraska *right south of Omaha* and right around Brownsville, we saw the storm. I was driving in my RX-7, so I was ready to outrun *or try* any tornado :p Anyway, we saw it comming, it looked NASTY as hell, though it was a small cell. We knew when it was about to hit us, with the big ****ing hail. Then the rain hit, and as with you, 10 mph to avoid dying. It was pretty freaking bad. Forgot my digi cameras at home that trip, so I coudln't get any 1337 pics. I hate myself for that....
 
Was it the same storm you think man? I'm trying to remember, <ponders> i'm trying to remember if I was in nebraska, or kansas. I had just come through Omaha. I think I started driving on a tollway, I cant remember which one though. Or even if that was during the storm. Man, My mind is fuzzy.
 
This was many months ago, so I seriously doubt the same storm :p
 
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