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Published: August 16th 2013
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Mount Rushmore
Winner of the Most Exceeded Expectations Award Driving through and around Rapid City, South Dakota was making us rethink our decisions on procreation. If having children means you must resort to entertainment gimmicks like “Putz and Glo - that will rock you” or “Old McDonald’s Farm” and other similarly tacky amusements, we aren’t cut out for parenting. Driving past all of this signage was significantly reducing my pre-existing albeit uniformed, cynical and low expectations of this National Monument. But, the Most Exceeded Expectations Award is definitely going to
Mount Rushmore!
This place / sculpture is just fantastically impressive. What a sight. And, what a feeling of good old fashioned American pride to bear witness to such an amazing endeavour undertaken at a time when not every manual task was conducted using robotics or simply outsourced. Plus, we had gorgeous blue skies - not a single cloud around - making the views even more spectacular. I'm pretty sure George, Thomas, Abe and Teddy are my favourite presidents - sorry George. Strange to see them with heads approximately 60 feet tall!
Also, the signs everywhere are amusing which containing information about just how many stairs (250) you’d have to climb
Life is a Highway
This one you will have to ride all night long. if you took the path and just how difficult (strenuous) the walk would be. Then, they strategically place comfy seating next to the soda fountain and the pulled pork sandwich vendor. You’d almost think there was a conspiracy to keep America getting fatter. By the looks of it... it’s working.
Next up, Wyoming. Driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota was gorgeous. Once across the Wyoming border, those hills faded into the horizon in our rear view mirror and we were left with the most bleak drive of our trip so far. Miles and miles of barren and featureless highway - apart from the occasional small lonely nodding oil pump. However, the roads were gloriously empty with very sparse traffic. The highlights of the drive were:
• The effect of highway hypnosis on the eyes and the mind - no need for narcotics after 8 hours of this!
• The long expanses of road construction - seriously, we’ve never seen such an aggressive approach to ripping up and completely rebuilding a road. Way to get after it cowboys!
• The
Black Thunder Coal Mine- containing one of the largest deposits of coal in
the world and being the second most productive mine in the US complete with HUGE trains, HUGE utility vehicles and not much else... hard to imagine the lives of the people who work at that mine.
• The
Wind River Canyon - a 2,500 foot canyon with labeled sections of rock based upon their age... for you bible literalists, skip ahead here... some of those rocks are reported to be over 2.5 billion years old - wicked!
Finally, we arrived in Thermopolis. What a weird place. We stayed in the least scary of all the motels in town, the Rainbow Inn with a cleverly thought out wifi set up. We were feeling brave so we went for a walk around town to scout out the hot springs and the nightlife. We opted not to partake in the “natural” hot springs which were really just pools you pay to swim in. We suspected that it would just feel like floating around in a 1970s-esque warm bath with a bunch of strangers, the smell of sulfur adding to the allure and the nagging fear in the back of our minds that really we were just
doggy paddling through water warmed due to a high urine content.
We did manage to find a small local Mexican restaurant -
Las Fuentes Mexican Food - for some cervezas and dinner. Oddly, Jon ordered shrimp tacos. Why you would order seafood in a landlocked place miles from the shore, I have no idea. I went for the locally bred and butchered beef burrito. Delicious. At the end of the day, the cerveza was the main course of the meal and the food was really just accoutrements.
One last note on today. If you are a fan of air conditioning, stay at the Rainbow Inn. This aircon is Cowboy Strong! The real shame is that after all that cerveza, it took Jon until about 5 in the morning to figure out how to turn it off.
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