Tuesday August 12th, 2014, officially the day of Rapid City/Hill City/Keystone travel.
We were up nice and early, around 6am, and departed around 7am for Rapid City center for coffee at Alternative Fuel coffee house.
Arriving at Alternative Fuel, one can only be wow’d by the quaint little shop with twists on modern classic dishes. To start the morning off right, Jenina had a Quiche, while Robert had a sausage breakfast burrito. A typical almond latte for Jenina and a typical Mocha for Robert. It’s when you look in the dessert cabinet that you see deserts out of this world. A chocolate brownies covered in caramel and chocolates, or a toblerone white chocolate coffee or a supreme coffee cake, that would get anyones taste nuds excited. Service was fast and the quality was excellent.
From Alternative Fuel, we directed ourselves to Mount Rushmore. The drive was very scenic. Twisty roads, buldging mountains, and this beautiful weather that made it seem so surreal.
Arriving at Mt Rushmore (a $11 annual pass for the car load), your greeted with the Avenue of Flags. Every state has their flag flying high. You feel as if your entering a greek colessium waiting for gladiators to show up and fight. As you reach the end of the Avenue of flags, its hard to grasp the view of Mount Rushmore. The life like faces staring over the Black Hills; the sheer size of the faces; the thought of the man power and time put into this project strikes hard. It’s at that point which you realize how difficult this project really was and the inspiration behind it. I might add that we also paid $3.50 for the worlds smallest bottle of “Smart Water”, but was much needed in the heat along with the amount of walking along the Presidents trail.
Leaving Mt Rushmore, it only seemed right to sum it up with Crazy Horse Memorial.
Let me tell you that this was an over charged attraction. It’s $13 per person. Oh wait, if you want a better more personalized view, try another $125 per person on top of your initial $13. The view at Mt Rushmore far exceeded our expectation when compared to the unfinished Crazy Horse. The 2 highlights that got both of us excited, had to have been watching the dynamite blow another chunk of the rock out, followed by the minature scale of the project. If someone told us that Crazy Horse was only worth viewing if you were willing to spend $138, we might have had to evaluate our finances. By this point, we had already commited to the attraction.
During our travels, Jenina explained that she had never been on a horse before. Black Hills mountian seemed like an obvious choice. After Crazy Horse, we made a trip up to Hill city for lunch. We stopped off at the Mangy Moose saloon for a quick bite to eat. Prior to dining, a quick phone call down to KOA ranch, got us a reservation for 3pm, two people, for a 1 hour 10 minute horseback trail ride.
We had a shared lunch of Chicken fingers and fries. Time was limited to make the commute back from Hill city to Custer city, and required us to devore our shared meal.
Entering KOA ranch is like entering an old western town. Small shops that carry wine, gifts, and ice cream, complete the property. We sign in, and get a brief orientation on how to safely ride their horses, and off to the trails we went. GoPro mounted, we couldn’t wait to hit the trails.
This ride could be best explained as a safe green horn ride. No fast action, or gallops, just a leisure crawl thru dense bush and mud. Don’t get us wrong, this was an enjoyable scenic ride thru the rich Black Hills national forest. One hour and ten minutes later, we arrived back at the ranch with smiles on our faces. $35 per person well spent.
Departing the ranch, we made our way back into the town of Keystone. Another town with western feel. A nice little shopping district great to find South Dakot souvenirs. Prices were great for such a tourist driven town. The streets seemed busy with tourists and the streets were lined with Harley’s. Both of us enjoyed this little town.
On our way back to the hotel, we decided to venutre into the city center of Rapid City. Bronze statues of past presidents on every corner surrounding Main St and Joesph St. A midst our round-a-bout, we came across an alley with graffiti from one side to the other. Talented art work, and not the novice tag writer. Jenina couldn’t have been more excited to Instagram her latest finds.
Hunger and thirst set in quickly. It was a toss up between returning to the hotel and ordering a taxi, or being selective on who would drink. Jenina felt dehydrated, and thought it was best to avoid alcohol. Jenina + Robert decided to hit up the Firehouse Brewing company in the middle of Main St. A live solo artist played accoustic sounds of classic rock out of a once used Firehouse. Robert ordered the “Brown Eyed Girl” with Jenina ordering some classic H20 on the rocks with a twist. Prior to ordering some food, the waitress explained the deal on a 8 x 4oz flight of beer to sample for $12. Robert couldn’t resist. Jenina ordered the Firehouse chicken burger and slaw, while Robert ordered the Ranchers pie (sheppards pie with chunked beef steak). It was a filling meal. The amount of beer Robert drank didn’t help the cause.
A quick stop at the local Walmart made for an interesting end of the night experience. There was a few small items we had forgot to pick up, and Walmart has some of the best travel sized items. It was the late night dwellers at Walmart that made this trip interesting. If you think that your late night dwellers were odd in your big city….try a remote city like Rapid City. I can’t even go into detail the characters we saw tonight.
Final thought, no motorcycle rental as they were all booked. Looking forward to hiking the Badlands tomorrow.
Keep Tuned for Day 5!
