La Quinta Inn And Suites Rapid City

... Mountain. It sounded interesting so I set off in that direction. When I got there, however, much to my dismay, there was no horse in sight. And certainly not a crazy one. In the way that Mount Rushmore did exactly what it says on the tin, this place did nothing of the sort. But then I started reading. And watching. And it became abundantly clear that it was more impressive than it's barber shop ...

... other customers were getting. We should have been more assertive and complained...Still this is what we came for, both the good, bad and just plain quirky. Funny how no one seems remotely interested in asking where we're from &#8211; except the Jehovah's Witness I met yesterday!! Maybe we should start saying 'Kia Ora' or 'Gidday' more.... :0)<br><br>Drove straight to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, arriving just after 3 so it wasn't too sunny and very few tourists ...

... a town called Mystic. There are only a couple of buildings here so if you blinked fast you would have missed them. The road is very smooth for being a dirt one and much better than a road we took earlier on our trip in which we bump, bump, bumped down the road and that one was paved. We also pass an old mining town called Carlton and you can see where the miners cut a road, etc. They were looking for gold but apparently it was too hard to get to so the town did not last long.

We didn't make it to South Dakota on Wednesday as planned. We hit some very slow sections through the Rockies that threw us off schedule and would have put us into Hill City around midnight. We opted to stop 5 hours short in Douglas, Wyoming for the night and pushing on the next morning. We rolled into our KOA at 11:00 am, to set up camp, get lunch, and then go sightseeing. This weekend is the beginning of the ...

... to see if we could get onto their network - which we could!!! So bizarre scenario of MJ and Munchie sat in BW car-park at 10pm in the dark reading Hotmail (and finding out that Whitehead/Carr are siphoning off the few remaining Finance Staff - Angus next?). So far we've done about 3,500 miles and we're spending circa £25 each per day on accommodation and steak meals combined in fantastic hotels, great meals and spectacular scenery.

... out into the Black Hills. Here I did fill up with gas $1.26/galloon as opposed to $1.37/galloon in Kadoka.<br> After checking out downtown Rapid City I went out into the country again and stopped for the night off 16 near Keystone. The Badlands is one of the areas I would like to get back to and see more of sometime.<br> Picture #4 now available from my redbubble portfolio http://www.redbubble.com/people/greenva nartusa