The Devil's Tower and The 4 Face Buddha.

Wow....I thought I could really blog every day on my R&R during off duty hours at South Dakota but I was wrong. Just getting to places of interest is a journey, not a trip and the hours spend at each attraction equates to late hours back to the hotel. The time in the hotel is should be spend resting, checking e-mails and blogging but it turn out to be a STARCRAFT Lan-gaming party with Ricky, Garfield, John, Lit and Danny almost every evening. Old game it might be but we guys are totally hooked to the multiplayer game. Unpredictability of human player is always an attraction power in the game. So much so, I indirectly helped Blizzard to sell 2 more copies of the games when Danny and Lit headed down today to the local BESTBUY store to get the Starcraft Battlechest edition at only US$9.99.

1 hour more to the night-shift work today so time to write about my experience during this 2 days of absence from the blogging scene. We headed out to Devil's Tower National Park 2 days ago to 's view the Devil's Tower. What is the Devil' Tower? Its a unique natural protrusion of volcanic rock, almost vertical all around its waist and flat as a plain at the top. Properly termed a "Monolith" as read from Wikipedia.com. Around 386m from where I stood. Legends tell of a giant bear tried to climb the Devil's Tower to reach the top so that it could devour some Native Indian kids. This bunch of kids was chase by the bear while picky flowers and some heavenly being saved their butt by raising the earth beneath them. The bear tried to climb but kept slipping down the the edge and eventually gave up, leaving the distinctive scratch mark all around the Devil's Tower.

This is the visitor center...

and this is the little devil and the Devil's Tower

Did you know? The Devil's Tower was featured on the Film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which I never watch before and could never relate to at all, unfortunately else it could had been an even more interesting tour. Anyway, Encik Ho was joking to us that we might see MGM Studio ( The movie production company) sign board on top of the Devil's Tower.

The Devil's Tower is consider sacred by the Native Indians in the area. Why???? Might it be that the Angel trapped the Devil inside thousands of years ago? Else how did the name came about? Saw a sign informing visitors to respect the place and stay on the trails. I guess no one read the sign board at all since a bunch of kids have already scaled the numerous small rocks at the foot of the tower to get as close as possible to the monument...

Respect...Stay on the trail.

Kids inspired a bunch of Singaporean adult to climb the rock for a shot.
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The Entrance to Mount Rushmore National Monumet

Its pretty cold, please respect nature and bring your jacket.

As the Great Wall of China is to China, the Mount Rushmore National Monument is to South Dakota. Lossly termed by our guys as the "4 Faced Buddha", an American icon that took 14 years, tons of dynamites and and 400 workers to sculpt. I almost could not imagine how this guys were able to blast and chisel their way from a faceless granite cliff into the face of the 4 President of USA. The impossibility imagined easily make this one of the proud National icon of the American. There is a video show right there to tell visitor the development and creation of this famous icon. It might have been here for many decades but still it attract tons of visitors, not only foreign tourist but majority Americans.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Of the 4 faces of the President, Washington was the first to be created and in my opinion its the better looking among the four. The loss rocks below the monument are left overs granite during the construction of the monument. If Singapore gonna create a "4 Face Buddha" who will it be? Lee Kuan Yew definitely got to be in for his politics and for being the Godfather or God-Grandfather of our nationa. Next should be Jack Neo for his brand of comedy and reviving Singapore's movie industry. Fandi Ahmad will be the third one, he brought glory to Singapore soccer scene during Malaysia Cup times. Could not think of the fourth person.... hmm

Me!!! They sculpt a special edition head and painted it right next to Washington.

Looks especially serene during sunset.