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Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

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!

1 comment:

BiblioGoddess said...

That is some weirdly gorgeous scenery. Thank you for sharing.