Quality Inn Rapid City

Having somehow survived the past couple of nights, despite my debilitating disease, I decided to choose life and see a doctor. Very nice chap he was too. He confirmed my fears when he told me that I had indeed picked up a little known virus more commonly associated with lost cities of gold and temples of doom. For the benefit of the nurse in the room, he used layman's terms and called it an ear ...

<br>Overcast and cloudy this morning looking out our window into the carpark of the hotel. Free Hotel breakfast was standard American buffet with the added interest of 'make your own waffles' &#8211; of course 3 of us had to try them (Kate wasn't keen). Hitting the road at 9am we hit a country road where we were the only vehicle for miles and miles. Stopping to use a restroom at a Wyoming gas station, Josh had fun counting out his allet full of pennies for a Hershey bar ...

... at the water park. Juliet had a blast, Ellie was a little more timid and sat with the grown ups for a little while. After a couple of hours we decided that we were not ordering pizza and pasta, we got dressed, and headed into downtown Rapid City for a nice meal. Well I was shocked we found the coolest bar and restaurant in the middle of Main Street. It was called the firehouse and it had the most amazing outside seating area with ...

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day today. We left our headquarters, and headed west to Wyoming, driving thru vast stretches of picturesque dark forested mountains of the western Black Hills. <br><br>Finally we caught sight at the top of a hill of Devil's Tower upthrust against the ...

... are making their money in the vacation period and then close for the rest of the year. Soooo not rock worthy.LOL Couldn't get wifi anywhere, AT&T hasn't made it to Rapid City (pun?). Back to the motel to get my wifi card. Motel 6 has been pretty good so far. Except for the smoking room in Casper but I had to be happy to get a room, I didn't make a reservation and after 10 hours driving, I wasn't about to drive around a little longer. This motel ...

... of seeing pine tree after pine tree, it was blade of grass after blade of grass. At one stage, we even contemplated stopping the car and running onto the side of the road to roll the rolls of hay that were there - just for fun! What a disaster! Our legs felt like they wanted to jump outside the car by themselves because our bums were totally welded into the shape of the car seats. It was terrible! Never are we coming back to Dakota! We stopped off along the way at Theodore ...

... squirrels (eek) and other random things, yep. Prairie dogs... nope. We saw one little critter cross and I kid you not, he stopped at the side of the road, looked both ways a couple of times and then bounded across. No just seemingly running across the road as so many other wild animals seem to do. We had hoped to see Mount Rushmore today but time was cracking on so instead we settled for the scenic byway through the Black Hills, and were not disappointed.

... as Mt. Rushmore, and is by far the largest KOA I've ever been in. They have two camp stores, a candy shop, an ice cream/pizza place, and horseback riding stables that have more than 50 horses to rent by the hour or for a three-hour ride. Katie &amp; I walked down by the stables to visit and ere amazed by the number of horses. They offer a Chuckwagon Dinner Show event with a hayride out to the venue. There's also ...

... is the largest town in SD and the site was barren with houses overlooking it and a busy 4 lane highway next door. Not our imagined rustic campsite in the forest. We'd booked in advance so had to pay for one night and then immediately left for Keystone which is a small town just below Mount Rushmore (the four American presidents carved/blasted out of a rock cliff). As we climbed out of Rapid City the plains disappeared and the scenery ...

... of this trip. I was really taken by surprise by the landforms. When you are approaching mountains you usually see them in the distance and you adjust to their size as you get closer, but here the approach was basically a flat plain and when you reach the edge of the badlands they drop away before you suddenly in all their fantastic eroded shapes. Next stop was the Windows Overlook where I hiked the Door Trail, then I ...