Belle Deadfish Spearwood Fourche

Here are the pictures from my final day in South Dakota and our venture into Wyoming. We took interstate 90 straight out of Rapid City and headed west. We ventured through Sturgis, Deadwood, Spearfish, Belle Fourche, the geographic center of the United States, Devils Tower and Gillette, Wyoming.

This was a great way to end our vacation as Devils Tower left me awed. The smaller cities that we drove through were fun and interesting. Deadwood and Spearfish are cities important to the early days of the gold rush that took place in this area in the late 1800's. Gillette was the last city that we passed through and we could have probably left it off the agenda but we had the time to go and I would have spent the rest of my life going "I wonder what was in Gillette". That mystery was solved with the answer of "not much, really".

We did see an enormous coal mine (for lack of a better word). It isn't the same type of mining I'm used to from my years in West Virginia as the ground looks as though it is simply scraped open to reveal the seam and the coal is put into huge dump trucks then put on a conveyor belt and loaded onto a train. The seam of coal is miles long and could be 50ft or more deep. The operation is enormous and really left me understanding the coal availability in the western US much better. The daggone stuff could be tilled up with a good rototiller almost.

The vacation overall was fantastic and I hope that you guys enjoy all the pictures that I was able to get up on line. Again, many of the pictures are captioned, those that aren't I think are either self explanatory or repetitive and shouldn't need much explanation.

Enjoy!

The Geographic Center of The United States

We got the chance to visit the geographic center of the US while on our visit to the middle of the country and here is a quick video from it. The "Geographic Center of the US" is a bit contrived as it only includes the 48 contiguous states and Alaska. Hawaii is not included in this designation so I guess in reality I visited a flag planted in concrete on some ranch out in the middle of BFUSA.

To get to the marker we drove out to a place called Belle Fourche. Belle Fourche has a population of just slightly less than 4500 and is surrounded by miles and miles of absolutely nothing. Once we got to BF (the initials are VERY appropriate) we got directions and off we went. The directions included such things as "when you get to the silver pole barn" and "take the dirt road" and that should have been a clue. We took route 85 north of the city for the 13 miles and then took a left and drove out the dirt road for an additional 7.5 miles.

The drive out to the site on the dirt road was desolate as we didn't pass another person or vehicle. We didn't even pass a house! We did, however, pass two ICBM Minute Men missile silos. There are pictures of those in the second set of pictures I've posted on my trip.

If your future travels call for you being in the Belle Fourche area of South Dakota I would suggest that this site be passed up if you are in any sort of hurry although if you are a geek like me then get up that dirt road! Enjoy the video!

The second video is from The Black Hills. Enjoy!

Oh, Give Me a Vacation Where The Deer and the Antelope Play

Day 2 started early and stayed full. We left the hotel at about 830am and after a quick stop at the Flying J for a supply of snack foods TM and I headed off to The Reptile Gardens for an up close look at some of natures wonders. Besides the Bald Eagle, I didn't see many although TM was awed by the cold blooded creatures of the underworld. The turtles were ok but the live snake show nearly ended me. We were in a room about the size a big tool shed with a snake "trainer" that was showing us the fascinating world of invertebrate reptiles when he pulled out a glass box with a box attached to a string. The trainer lifted the box to reveal a VIPER which proceeded to strike the side of the glass and I jumped up and literally RAN out of the show and refused to return. The Reptile Garden also featured a "prairie dog town" and a bald eagle that the facility had nursed back to health from near death.
From there, we headed up to Mt. Rushmore for a look-see. We really were lucky to get three gorgeous weather days and the pictures from the Monument reflect that. With the snow from the previous few days still showing itself in certain areas the temperatures were very mild and often we didn't need jackets.
After our run to Mount Rushmore we drove through Custer State Park taking picture after picture of the incredible scenery. You can check it out at this link http://www.travelsd.com/placestogo/stateparks/custerstatepark.asp?utm_source=GooglePPC&utm_medium=PPC&utm_content=CSP&utm_campaign=CSP2008

The buffalo herds are amazing as was the overwhelming open spaces. Getting attacked by burros also was an interesting event.
The road through Custer led to the backside of the park and then out of the park to the Crazyhorse Memorial. The memorial is completely self funded and has refused millions of dollars of federal funding twice stating that the facility should be funded by visitors and not the government. The statue will be the largest in the world when completed. For a couple of comparisons, it will be nearly three times taller than the Statue of Liberty and the entire Mount Rushmore structure will fit in the face of Crazyhorse. This one I would suggest seeing. For more information, you can go here http://www.crazyhorse.org/.

The road from Crazyhorse runs back into the park and onto a highway know as "Needles Highway". Notice in those pictures that there is more snow than in the others. This is much higher than most of the other parts in the area and this road is the closest paved road to the "highest point of South Dakota" which is over 7500 feet.

This was a remarkable drive and well worth the time. It did take an entire day though as we didn't get back to the hotel until after 9pm.

Enjoy the pictures!

Rapid City. Day 1. Wall Drug and The Badlands.

I must say that my vacation to the Rapid City, South Dakota area has been far better than I had even hoped for. Considering that two days before our arrival the city had received 18 inches of snow and the mountains in the surrounding areas had gotten as much as four feet the weather was certainly on my mind. As you will see in the pictures there was no need to worry. The weather was phenomenal with highs in the high 60's and low 70's for our three days in the area and there wasn't even a threat of showers.

We landed Sunday morning at Rapid City Regional Airport, picked up our rental car (a wonderful Honda Accord V6) and dashed over to the Fairfield Inn to see if we could check in (ridiculously) early. The front desk was more than accommodating and got us a room where we quickly changed and headed out to explore.

We took the east side of the city on day 1 and headed out to the world famous Wall Drug located in the city of Wall. For those of you from the eastern US (particularly the Myrtle Beach loving West Virginians), you can see from the pictures that it is similar to "South of the Border" with the entire downtown turned into one big tacky trinket tourist trap that I so love.

After Wall Drug we headed to Badlands National Park for an afternoon of sightseeing there. The park floored me in places with wonderful terrain and color. It was also very cool to be that close to Bison as well as the other animals roaming the park.

Once we circled through the entire park we headed back to Rapid City for a drive and walk around town and dinner at the Firehouse Brewpub. The downtown area is playing off of nearby Mt. Rushmore with a series of statues located on every street corner of each President of the United States as well as a couple wonderful Native American pieces.

Below are the pictures from Day 1. I hope to have Day 2 pictures up later tonight and Day 3 up tomorrow. Keep checking back and thanks for reading!