With our extra day, we decided to hit some of the touristy places around Rapid (that's what the locals call Rapid City, apparently, based on the one local we talked to who said the name of the city). First up was Bear Country USA. We left our passports at home but luckily they still let us in. It was kind of pricey for a 2 mile drive-through wildlife park but it was neat to be close to animals like arctic wolves, elk and bears. It's rut time for the elk so they handed us a flyer telling us that they sometime charge cars; thankfully our Kia Sportage wasn't sexy enough for the male elk to bother chasing. Recently seeing bison and bighorn sheep in the wild did make the park lose some of its luster but it was still fun. At the end, they had a pen full of bear cubs that you could walk around and that was pretty good since they were active. The enormous gift shop did put me off a little but I guess you only make money 4 months of the year so you gotta do it.
Next we went a few miles up the road to Reptile Gardens. Jess was quite intrigued since there are signs for this everywhere around Rapid City and when I looked at TripAdvisor, it got decent reviews. I will say that it did have a large array of reptiles but it was a bit smaller than we had hoped. It wasn't a disappointment but I'm sure seeing so many animals lately made it seem less special.
After lunch at a local place called TGI Fridays, we headed up to the mining town of Lead. It was an active gold mine from 1876-2002 and was owned by George Hearst at one point. Now that they left it, they do tours of the upper areas of the mine and the town that grew from it (the actual mine, 8000 ft. down, is now used for scientific purposes). Unfortunately the last tour just left when we got there so we didn't get to see much. After Labor Day, a lot of places do limited hours and they don't really tell you what those hours are. Even in Deadwood, yesterday seemed like the last big day since the town was half deserted today.
Our day ended with doing laundry, booking hotels for tomorrow (we decided to stay 3 nights in Billing, MT) and a little gambling. The Eli Young Band were playing at our hotel tonight and while we decided not to go since we just wanted to relax before getting up early tomorrow, we could open our hotel window and still hear the songs somewhat clearly.
Tomorrow we head to North Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt National Park and then ending the day in Montana. As the Deadwoodians say (quoting Wild Bill Hickok), "it's a good day when you don't leave Deadwood in a casket." Note: no one says this.
No comments:
Post a Comment