Day 14: Billings to Custer — Two Mountains, Two Stories, One Black Hills

2026 Rally4Vets America Grand Tour

Today began with goosebumps before we’d even had our coffee. Driving out of Billings, we passed riders on horseback assembling in the morning light — reenactors gathering for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the very commemoration we’d brushed up against two days ago. Seeing them riding against the Montana sky, you could feel the weight of 150 years sitting right there on the prairie. A quiet, powerful way to start a day. Then we pointed the WRX toward South Dakota and the Black Hills, where two of the most remarkable monuments in America sit just 17 miles apart — and tell two halves of the same story.

Mount Rushmore: Majesty in Granite

Mount Rushmore is one of those places that’s so familiar from photos you wonder if the real thing can possibly measure up. It does. It’s simply majestic — Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln gazing out over the Black Hills, 60 feet tall, carved into living granite. Standing on the Avenue of Flags with all the states flying and those four faces looking down, we felt the full weight of what they represent: the founding, the expansion, the preservation, and the union of this country.

The documentary on the carving is excellent — the sheer audacity of the engineering, the workers who dangled off the mountain for years, and the way the monument has come to mean something to people not just here but all over the world. On a tour celebrating America at 250, Rushmore is a powerful reminder of the ideas this nation was built on. We could’ve stared all day.

Crazy Horse: The Other Half of the Story

Then we drove 17 miles down the road to the Crazy Horse Memorial — and if Rushmore tells America’s founding story, Crazy Horse tells the story of the people who were here first.

This one floored us. It’s a mountain carving so massive that when it’s finished, Crazy Horse’s head alone will be larger than all four Rushmore presidents combined — the largest mountain carving in the world. It was begun in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski at the request of Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, whose words still ring out: “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.” Ziolkowski gave the rest of his life to it; his family carries the work on to this day, three generations in, still without a dollar of government funding.

Crazy Horse — Tasunke Witko, the Oglala Lakota leader — points out over his homeland, and the memorial tells the indigenous story with depth, honesty, and dignity. Together, these two mountains in the sacred Black Hills hold the whole, complicated, human truth of American history side by side. You should see both. You should sit with both.

The Moment That Stopped Us: A Code Talker’s Bronze Star

Inside the Indian Museum of North America at Crazy Horse, one display stopped us in our tracks: the uniform of an Oglala Lakota code talker from World War II — Corporal Garfield T. Brown of the 1st Infantry Division. His Eisenhower jacket, his field telephone, and his medals, including a Bronze Star with the “V” device — the “V” stands for valor, awarded for heroism in direct combat.

Think about the layers of that. A Lakota man, from a people who had every reason to feel this country had failed them, went to war for it anyway — and used his own language, the very language the government had once tried to stamp out of Native children in boarding schools, as an unbreakable code to help win the war.. There is no more powerful symbol of service and sacrifice than that, and standing in front of that quiet glass case was the most moving moment of our day. This is exactly why we drive.

Snack Attack & a Blast From the Past

We rolled into Custer, South Dakota, and checked into the gloriously retro Rocket Motel — neon sign, mid-century charm, a sign out front that reads “It’s a Blast From the Past” and “Welcome, You Are Our Blessing.” After a day spent with the weight of history, pulling up to a cheerful 1950s neon rocket was exactly the palate cleanser we needed. The rallymobile looked right at home parked under that glowing sign.

A Word of Thanks to Subaru

And one more thing. After 15 days and a few thousand miles through mountains, plains, canyons, and prairies, we have to tip our hats to Subaru for building a WRX that not only looks fantastic in the Rally4Vets colors but is also an absolute joy to drive across this enormous, beautiful country. Comfortable, capable, and a genuine head-turner at every stop — the car keeps doing its job, and then some. Thank you, Subaru, for being the perfect partner for a road trip of a lifetime.

A Day That Held It All

Reenactors at dawn, two mountains telling two sides of one story, and a Lakota code talker’s Bronze Star that we won’t forget. Days like this are why we set out — to stand on the ground where America’s story unfolded, in all its grandeur and complexity, and to honor everyone who served and sacrificed to bring us to 250 years.

What a country. What a day.

The Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour isn’t a road trip. It’s a moving act of remembrance; a celebration of the country and the people who created it.

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