Ramada Inn Rapid City

... He gave me some strong antibiotics so I hope to be back to full health in time for tea and crumpets on the front lawn.<br><br>With a new found respect for life coursing through my veins, I headed to Mount Rushmore to see four giant faces in a row. And I wasn't disappointed. There were four of them. They were giant. And strike me down if they weren't in a row. <br><br>Just down the road was Crazy ...

... I have to say that although the sculptures were impressive, they were nowhere as big as I was expecting. Took the obligatory photos, and walked some of the way around the very pristine paths that went right to the edge of the rock face with the<br>Presidents above. In case you're wondering the 4 presidents in the sculpture are: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt &amp; Thomas Jefferson. On the way out we asked some other tourists to take our photo as a ...

... the seven maidens but failed. The sisters ascended into the sky and they became the stars of the Big Dippers. The bear&#8217;s claw marks still show on the Tower.) <br><br><br><br>We drive up the road through treed and red earth to the Visitor Center and park in the RV parking. Listen to a Ranger speaking about the kinds of plants and animals that live here before heading up a trail. There are Ponderosa Pines (They only grow this far east.) as well as ...

... Custer State Park, named fro General George Custer. We were told to go in the late evening as to see the animals feeding. This park covers 71,000 acres, and the biggest draw for us was the bison/buffalo herds, elk, white-tail and mule deer, a covey of turkeys and a lone antelope. It was hair-raising to drive through the needles of granite and we even ...

... with the famous 4 - Wahington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson. Yes, we've seen these images on TV and films, but let me tell you, it is NOTHING like being there. The detail on these sculptures is incredible, right down to the shading of the eye, to allow for pupil detail etc. 14 years to complete, not including the dreaming, planning etc. The sculptor Gertzen Bourgen, travelled for 3 days on horseback , with his ...

... leader on Chavez, and I was second on Rainbow. Fred, one of our two tour guides, was a strange but friendly old cowboy. He shared some of his life stories with Phil along the way. Shortly after we began, I noticed Phil's horse having some trouble along the trails. I had thought something might have been wrong with his horse's hooves. This continued until the halfway point of the ride. Suddenly, Phil's horse laid down right in the middle of the trail, with Phil still ...

... for it was used as the mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, upon seeing it its not hard to see why. Our first glimpse of it was a dark and forbading monolith on the not too distant horizon, its overall shape becoming clearer as you approached. By the time you are within range to take in the monolith in its entirity for the first time it is possible to make out the fantastic natural stone column which snake up to the sky with an incredibly curve ...

... We'll get to that later, but first, here's the fun we had in Douglas and western Nebraska. (Yes, fun!) No one attempted to trivia question from yesterday. We thought someone might guess home to the Wyoming State Fair, which was taking place this week across the street from our hotel. Well, we were the lucky winners, the answer...Douglas, WY is known as the Jackalope City...the self-proclaimed home of the jackalope and boy are they proud of it. The city has jackalope mania ...

... close down for the winter). We passed by Crazy Horse Memorial which is still being "carved". It is paid for by entrance fees and donations but will take many years yet to finish. They have completed the face - else it would look like a open-cast coal works. There is nothing really to see and we didn't stop. The face is as large as the entire Mt Rushmore carving and the final sculpture is of Crazy Horse sat on a horse. It's gonna be huge. We pressed on through to the ...

... the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail a little further on. I stopped a while at the visitor center then onto the Gullies Overlook and the Pinnacles. What a day. I even saw a veritical rainbow that went straight up in the distance. <br> I was back to civilization when I reached Grand Rapids, stopping at the Ruchmore Mall where I got a late snack and picked up a book, groceries at the Kmart-supplies for the next few days as I would be ...