Best Western Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center Rapid City

... State Park has campgrounds, cabins and a lodge, all of which require reservations during the summer season. And, we've learned that the most scenic portions of the byway close after the first snow fall - so plan accordingly!!

Here's a link to the Norbeck Byway http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/24 59/

... more days of rain as well as unseasonably cool temperatures. We do have a few more sights we'd like to visit while we are here so we may just have to bundle up and head out. The only problem is we don't really have any cold weather clothing. I guess we will just have to layer on the sweathshirts and Ken will have to wear long pants!!

We were up early today for the short drive from our campground out to Custer State Park. We had arrived in Rapid City in time for the annual buffalo roundup and we were looking forward to taking this event off our 'list'. We've included quite a few pictures that we took along with a few that a friend of a friend took. You will be able to ...

... found closer to the entrance of the park, and we saw a few bison grazing in the hills along the way. We set up camp and had dinner (chips & salsa, and Goose Island Honker's Ale). Clear skies gave way to some of the best stargazing we had ever seen, views of the Milky Way, a couple shooting starts, and a very bright moon. The very early morning light of bright reds and oranges, with a little howling from some coyotes, gave way to a ...

... br>Then went back to the Badlands to see these natural wonders again. Had more time in the morning and got to do a bit of hiking around. The area does look quite different in the daytime sun then at sunset.

Then headed to Minuteman Missile National Historic Site to see another man made wonder. This is an decommissioned Minuteman II missile site just off I90. Quite a small little site but pretty interesting. the Missile in the silo is a trainer ...

... clean up the kitchen herself. I did acquire much of the SD pioneer culture growing up, but the Middle East did change me. I declined a dancing job at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally this year because I felt the women were going too far and felt uncomfortable, as if I was in a brothel. Overly flavorful foods, like American Chinese food, do not allure my taste buds like they once did. US news media continues to shock me by how much they DO NOT report ...

... just in time for the light show they show before they close. The area was pretty big and there is a walkway with all the 50 state flags raised. Right past the walkway, a huge amplitheater sits in front of the statues carved into the wall. When they say light show, they mean they play a movie in the theater and then they shine the lights on the statue and ask you to go home. I think the movie was decent, I couldn't really tell because the amplitheater was so big, the ...

... old school Zesto ice cream stand waiting to buy a shake and a malt [side note: yesterday Ann was lamenting that we had made 0 stops for ice cream on the trip, so we had to stop when we saw Zesto on such a hot day] Paul was cooking up a proposal. [Background: Ann was disappointed that our trip was not going to take us past Mt. Rushmore, but Paul had previous been to the many national park sites in western South Dakota with his mom so he wasn't planning to head through ...

Woke to another lovely morning and MJ went for a walk up the forested mountain. The region is often called iron mountain because the rock looks just like slightly rusted iron. There are huge lumps of it everywhere which have sheared from the main formation, but mixed in is all this white quartz. After breakfast we headed straight of to the nearby campsite where we managed to put the tent up in pretty short order and found that the site had wi-fi internet connectivity ...