Rapid City, Devils Tower and on to Billings

July 30 -- Today was a perfect touring day. The weather was bright, sunny and warm but not humid.

I liked where I was in downtown Rapid City. It had lots of cafes and shops of various types and also had various presidents standing around. The city uses the tag line "City of Presidents" evidently because many presidents have stayed there. Also, they have statues of various presidents decorating various street corners in the area. There were other Native American sculptures as well.







After having breakfast I walked down to the City Hall (again, the hotel was conveniently placed). I struck out with getting a zoning map to take with me. However, they did have a huge map (something like 5ft x 5ft) on the wall that they've been updating for years (colors of some of the areas were faded). They let me take a picture, so I can show you the type of maps I'm collecting. It's beginning to look like the days of paper zoning maps are numbered. They are moving online, but sometimes not in a very user-friendly form.

Finally, for Rapid City, I ran into this sign on a storefront. It's for a gun shop named "First Stop Guns". Being previously from California, I thought this was actually a protest sign at first. Understandable with a slight change in punctuation - "First, Stop Guns!"




Here's a slideshow of the photos from my time in Rapid City, South Dakota.






After about two hours and a stop for directions I made it to Devil's Tower. At first I was concerned because the parking was a bit crowded. However, once I got on the trail around the tower the number of people was quite reasonable - only a handful at a time were visible. I took the short loop around the tower which is about 1.3 miles. It took about 45 minutes which wasn't bad given that the trail was up and down plus there were information signs all around, as well as stopping to take pictures. I wanted to make a 360 degree view of the tower, but that will take a bit long, so I picked one of the best from the bunch of pictures I have for this post.

On the way out I stopped a few times to get some "arrival" shots of the tower (most people were stopping for these shots as they arrived). However, one stop was to tell people about pairiedogs. There were lots of rules about don't feed, don't approach, etc. seemingly to prevent the critters from getting too friendly and walking onto the road and getting squashed. Unfortunately, the ones I saw seemed to be very comfortable around people and cars, which I don't think was the result conservationists were after.

After going around the tower and getting some things at the gift shop I headed out of the monument and had a late lunch. Although I had a bottle of water for my walk, I should have had something to eat before I started the expadition. After that it was off to Billings. Flat plains are long gone, but no big mountains either, although a couple of the descents did pop my ears.

I probably won't post on Friday as I will won't have an internet connection. I'll try to post over the weekend, but I should be back on Monday evening at the latest.



Here's a slideshow of the photos from my time at Devils Tower.

TTFN

Ted

Sioux Falls and across South Dakota

July 29: Post 2 -- My first stop in Sioux Falls was the USS South Dakota memorial. I had read about this in the guidebooks and was curious what they had done. The ship was decommissioned after WW2 and eventually scrapped. Various parts of the ship were stored at military sites all over the place. I gather that one of the commanders of the ship had retired to Sioux Falls and was involved in obtaining these various parts. Rather than just displaying the parts in a random order, the parts will placed generally in their relative position in an outline of the ship (made of concrete it looked like). There was a central building which had some other equipment from the ship and also some models. On the outside of the building were plaques for the various battles in which the ship was involved. For a relatively small city, it was a fairly impressive effort.


Getting downtown was fairly easy. When I found the zoning/planning office, they were very helpful in getting me a map (my first big one). An engineer even took me to an annex where the GIS department had just been set up.









The printing was going to take a bit so I left my number and wandered down the the historic courthouse to have a look. It actually was several museums in one (I recall quilting an visual arts). I did see the balcony and the main courtroom (very empty). Before I could get much further, I got a call that the map was ready, so I splashed my way back to City Hall. After some confusion on where the map was, I paid for it and left.



Here's a slideshow of the photos from my time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.



My next stop was Rapid City, North Dakota. The distance was estimated at 340 miles. This is when I realized my vacation plans were a bit much. I'd already spent 3 or 4 hours getting to Sioux Falls. Now I had a trip equivalent to my drives from Los Angeles to San Jose and it was closing in on 3 PM. Plus, the rain didn't look like it was going away. On my list of things for next time is to plan less ambitiously. This was less ambitious in the number of cities visited in a day, but the distances are larger than before. Probably I should plan to alternate between driving days and sightseeing days.

Anyway, I headed down the I90 west with rain and overcast as far as I could see. After a grace period with no construction, they started popping up again, including one that was 20 miles long. Eventually the rain became less and less and the sun finally broke out. By the time I got to Rapid City the sun was becoming a bit of a problem - I was heading West and it was getting late. On the plus side, I picked up an hour, so I wasn't as late as I thought.

Finally, I have to admit that I was taken by some roadside advertising. Somewhere on my drive, I started noticing small billboards for Wall Drugs. They were almost all unique and often amusing. I don't recall how long they had been showing up, but after seeing them for quite a while, there was a sign saying "Only 150 miles to go". My guess is they were out at least 200 miles before the exit.




I got so curious about the place I decided to stop off for dinner (Wall is a town about 50 miles East of Rapid City). The place was in some ways a tourist trap. There wasn't anything there to see except the store, which was more like a small department store than a drug store/diner. The food was cafeteria style and OK. Most of the stuff that I saw for sale was rather kitschy western in one way or another. Still, my expectations weren't high; I was just curious. Once satisfied I headed on to Rapid City and made it there a little after 8 PM (Mountain Time).

More tomorrow.

Ted