MOUNT RUSHMORE, SOUTH DAKOTA
Greetings Loyal Airmen, we hope you are all enjoying this last weekend of summer and having a great Labor Day Holiday.  Last month (July) the Air Chief and his family here in Fort Collins, all piled into an SUV and head north east to South Dakota for a four day vacation to see two of this country's greatest sites; one finished and the other still a work in progress.  Above is a shot of famous Mount Rushmore, with Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Seeing this up close was inspiring and is something every American should once in their lifetime. It makes you feel proud of this Grand Old Republic of ours.
                   
               

We were lucky in be able to rent a beautiful cabin located in a massive camp grounds only a few miles from the monument.  Here's the Air Chief and Val relaxing on the front porch.  Vacations, even for us retired folks, are still wonderful get-aways.

And here we are standing in front of Mount Rushmore.  Can you tell we were have a great time.

    
                          Don “Nick” Clifford & the Air Chief
While at Rushmore, we naturally stopped in the see the gift shop in hopes of picking up a few souvenirs of our trip. Lo and behold, it proved to be our lucky day because appearing there that day was Don “Nick” Clifford, one of the original “drillers” of the monument.  According to Nick's autobiography, which the Air Chief quickly purchased and had autographed, Nick worked on the site between the years 1938 to 1940.  He's a truly remarkable man and true American hero.  It was an honor to shake his hand and meet him.

Left to right the Air Chief's vacation crew. Left to right, son Alan, Val, granddaughter Chelsea (who was visiting from Maine and lucky enough to join us on this adventure) the Air Chief, granddaughter Cora, our daughter-in-law Nicole and grandson Alex.  Those smiles were real, Loyal Airmen.

Leaving Rushmore, we headed down the highway to the Crazy Horse monument still in progress.  It is a massive undertaking ten time larger than Rushmore, in fact all of Rushmore would fit into the Crazy Horse's War Bonnet when it is completed.  Here are the Air Chief, Chelsea & Val.

With Crazy Horse in the background, here's Al and his Mom, Valerie. 

In the reception facilities is a smaller version of the completed Crazy Horse sculpture.  The significance of his pointing is part of the script on the back.  Where in supposedly someone asked the Chief where his home was, to which he replied, “There, where my people are buried. That is my home.”  Once completed, the Crazy Horse Monument will be a powerful remembrance of all Native American people who once were the only inhabitants of this grand land of ours.

And there you have our summer vacation trip for 2012.  Believe we took lots more picture than the few I've shared here.  If you'd like to see others, including some of the hundreds of motorcycles we saw go to my Facebook Album marked Rushmore Vacation.  We hope all our Loyal Airmen had a great summer as well.

Finally, over the past year, the Air Chief has been working with a Spanish comic company called Excelsior Comics writing a new five issue mini-series called CITY OF DREAMS.  The series will be run on their comics website, each page available for free.  Once all have been posted, they will use print-on-demand to print actual hard copies of the comics.

The cover to CITY OF DREAMS, book one, by artist publisher, Carlos Henry. You can view the pages, plus several other comics at their site located at (http://excelsiorwebcomics.blogspot.com/) Let us know what you think of it.  And that's it for another week Loyal Airmen.  As ever thanks for stopping.

Ron – Over & Out!