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The granite face of Crazy Horse, a Lakota warrior, was unveiled in 1998. - Mary Bergin

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For many, a road trip of some 600 miles into South Dakota, the Badlands and the Black Hills is a rite of passage.

It is the most classic of summer vacations, especially for Midwestern families looking for a taste of the Wild West. They encounter Shady Brady hats and jackalopes (rabbits with antlers, stuffed) at Wall Drug Store en route, then it's on to Black Hills Gold and red clay pottery, working cowboys and roaming buffalo.

This is timeless Americana, but it took until this year for me to make the trek. I presumed it would be wholesome, tame and predictable. Getting misty-eyed at the sight of Mount Rushmore and feeling awestruck while watching work on the Crazy Horse Memorial never occurred to me. But that is what happened.

This is our land of the free, home of the brave, place where the independent spirit seeks and sets seemingly impossible goals. Not much lasts forever, but these two iconic sculptures feel like exceptions.

What a legacy for their creators, which include Donald "Nick" Clifford, one of the last guys alive who helped carve Mount Rushmore.

He turns 87 on Saturday, July 5. He began climbing the mountain for pay at age 17, during the Great Depression. "Back in those days, we were glad to have a job," Clifford said, and he didn't care whether neighbors classified the mission as foolhardy.

Clifford -- who grew up four curvy, uphill miles from his job -- had worked in quartz mines before helping to drill, winch and sandblast the quartet of presidential faces into the mountaintop. That was his job for three years; about 400 men made this their occupation during the 14 years of Mount Rushmore's construction.

"It makes me proud to be an American, to have worked on something like this," Clifford said. He also played baseball "every day, rain or shine," as a part of the Mount Rushmore team, which won consecutive state championships. Clifford was a pitcher and outfielder; baseballs and books autographed by him are for sale.

At the Crazy Horse site, 17 miles southwest, no one predicts when work will finish. The massive undertaking (all of Mount Rushmore would fit into the head of nine-story-tall Crazy Horse) began 60 years ago, on July 3, 1948, when the first dynamite blast tore off 10 tons of rock.

Now the granite rubble exceeds 8 million tons. The face of the revered Indian warrior was unveiled in 1998; he was a Lakota, but this sculpture pays tribute to all tribes.

The work began because of Korczak Ziolkowski, who was the monument's designer and, for a while, it's sole laborer. He died in 1982. The sculptor began this project at midlife, at the request of a Lakota chief.

The work continues because of tour proceeds, private donations and the enthusiasm of the sculptor's widow, Ruth, who still lives in the mountainside log home that her husband built in the 1940s. "If you love your job, it doesn't seem like work," the 81-year-old woman insisted. "You are happy and grateful to begin each new day."

Seven of the couple's 10 children also are involved with the project, which Ruth called "storytelling in stone," on what others describe as sacred ground.

People make a mark on this planet in all kinds of ways. Not living to see the full impact of your thumbprint is irrelevant, when the dream and impulse are intense enough.