Dinosaurs, Deadwood & Dog Walks

The big city of Rapid City (population of about 80,000) provided us with a few good day adventures. Aside from the convenient WaldoMart for food shopping (which I hate but is pretty much your only choice for a grocery store round these parts), it has some fun sights. Rapid City (or "Rapid" as the locals call it) is known as the City of Presidents as a series of life-size bronze statues for our nations past presidents are placed along the city's sidewalks and street corners. Karl and I did pretty good in identifying them - I think we only got one wrong between the two of us! (Shout out to Mr. Jorgensen of Apponequet Regional High School for having all of the Presidents photos lining the top of your chalkboard in US History class!) Reading about the statues later we learned that they were, in fact, described as "life size"...which was actually quite shocking because we had ourselves some BEYOND short presidents!!!

We also visited Memorial Park in Rapid that had various statues and monuments. The Black Hills Veterans Memorial was particularly impressive and impactful to me, not only because of its visual beauty, but in that it had a plaque for each war with the dates of the war and a quote from the sitting President as to why we were entering or participating in that war. A piece of the Berlin Wall was also on display as a tribute to all of the Military Chaplains who had served. That was memorable and brought me back to my trip to Berlin in 1989 when I actually got to help chop the wall down....

There was an adorable Dinosaur Park that had some fun life size statues but also provided us with some amazing views of the city. Also, following that visit it was helpful when driving around the city to use the dinosaurs up on the hill as a reference point in navigation. Other highlights of the Rapid City area were a couple of cute little breweries and the world's most amazing COOKIES (Mary's Mountain Cookies on 6th Street) which I later learned is actually one location of a Colorado based company. Oh, and we spent a chilly drizzly day early on in our stay checking out The Journey Museum which gave a nice history of the area.

We visited the very impressive "Chapel in the Hills". Since many of the original settlers of the Dakotas were Norwegian Lutherans, they decided to build it in the style of the orginal stave church (in Norwegian, "stavkirke"). The Chapel is an exact replica of the famous "Borgund Stavkirke". Basically, the church is 100% handmade of wood and is a work of art!!!

I also had a very successful haircut intervention in Rapid at the most hilariously named "The Best Little Hair House". My hair was out of control and in my eyes and I was in dire need. My appointment that I had made got cancelled on the morning that we were on our way into the city so we spent a good hour walking around as I would go in and beg and get rejected by every salon until I was able to be seen as a walk-in at the "Hair House". Karl (and Penny) were saints hanging out waiting for me in the hot city - taking short strolls and sitting in the air conditioned truck.

One day we visited the city of Deadwood (just to say that we had!) and went on some very scenic rides and family hikes in that area. The Scenic Byways are literally jaw-dropping and pictures do NOT do any of the sights justice!