We loved the Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn!
One of the things I really wanted to do was visit downtown Rapid City, South Dakota because they had each President of the United States (bronze statutes) on the various streets. These are a few I took as we drove through since we had a lot of ground to cover today!
Firehouse Mercantile... loved the painting on the side of the building!
So the very first stop of the day was to Black Hills Harley-Davidson!
Pops has been here before (more recently last year when he visited Sturgis) but he forgot to get poker chips for his collection I have created for him. So I grabbed a t-shirt for my t-shirt quilt and the chips!
The Spry's have arrived!
For Labor Day Weekend they were having a Mustang Rally so the main street was completely shut down and there were tons and tons of Mustangs. If you are a Mustang lover this is the place you need to be.... just about every model, color and style you could imagine!
Random things around the town....
Couple of the bars around Sturgis.....
(Why so many Harley-Davidson t-shirts? Dad rides a Harley and has since we were little bitty.... I went through his closet and used all of his old t-shirts for 3 t-shirt quilts which means I get to buy him really cool/fun shirts for future t-shirt quilts!)
http://golddustdeadwood.com/dining/
We couldn't spend a lot of time in Deadwood (really neat little town and would love to go back sometime) because we had another National Memorial to see....
I have wanted to see this memorial for a while now and it's hard to believe we are actually here!
It doesn't look very big when you are driving but once you get to the memorial this thing is huge! I would have loved to hike up part of the trail but Mommy-Dearest didn't have a 4-wheel drive wheelchair!
I think Mommy-Dearest was happy to be here too!
While shopping in the gift shop I got a signed book from one of the original Mount Rushmore Driller, Nick Clifford! He was really nice and his wife was a pistol! (While he didn't look so happy I think this was his smile)
I'm glad we spent a little time here and would love to come back sometime!
At this point in the trip Mommy-Dearest was acting up... You see Brandon thought it would be hilarious to run next to her as her wheelchair took off down the steep incline.... Mommy-Dearest freaked out a little and began yelling "Help! Someone help me!" which brought the attention of almost everyone at the memorial.... needless to say Mommy-Dearest was quickly wheeled away to the car! Oh my gosh.... I can't take these two anywhere!
When I was researching places to visit in South Dakota this is one of the places that popped up. I kind of forgot about it until we saw it as we were leaving Mount Rushmore. It really wasn't on our schedule (we really need to get moving towards Nebraska but then again we didn't really have reservations anywhere.... this tidbit will come in handy later in the trip) however we decided to take a quick drive through Bear Country USA!
Rocky Mt. Elk
Reindeer
Arctic Wolves
Big Horn Sheep
Rocky Mt. Goat
Mule Deer
Mountain Lions
Bears
Buffalo and Prong Horns
Grizzly Bear
Dennis "Doc" Casey DDS
Founder of Bear Country USA - 1972
1931-2000
So our intentions was to get to Nebraska however we really wanted to see the Badlands. On the way there we kept seeing signs... tons and tons of signs for miles and miles for Wall Drug Store. Well sugars, you know what that meant... we were going to check this place out if they spent so much on advertising! Slight detour about to take place.....
This ol' boy was a pickin' and a grinnin'....
I walked up and he was speechless and needed to shave!
These boys were still at it!
We found a cute little jack-a-lope and took a quick ride....
This big guy is hungry!
The bad part of this trip is that there isn't enough hours in the day to see everything. Our little detour cost us precious daylight but we made it just in time to visit the Badlands National Park to see the sunset. (You know me... I try to squeeze as much as I can into any trip)
A quick selfie and it was time to find somewhere to lay our heads!
(No we didn't leave Mommy-Dearest anywhere... she was taking it all in from the backseat)
Ok so remember a little earlier in this post when I said that we didn't have hotel plans for tonight? So when I was planning our trip our intentions was to be in Nebraska by this evening however as you can see from our trip we spent a little more time in beautiful South Dakota. I guess I haven't really mentioned that it was Labor Day weekend until now.... we drove about an hour or so back to Rapid City, South Dakota thinking it is a big city and they have plenty of rooms.... It's not a great idea to just "wing it" on a holiday weekend because every single room was sold out! We drove 2 1/2 hours to Fort Pierre to find a room.
My goodness it never felt so good to finally lay our heads down!
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