I’ve made a discovery! It is quite possible to find excellent coffee in the US, you just have to search for “espresso bars” instead of cafes! Using this discovery I quickly found Alternative Fuel Coffee House in Rapid City, South Dakota, and spent a peaceful morning drinking great lattes and getting caught up on my writing. Ahhh…. When my phone and computer batteries gave out, it was time to move on, and I drove westward again into Wyoming. My goal…
Driving south trough the Black Hills of South Dakota is a relaxing experience. The roads are winding and there’s little traffic, with dark but widely spaced pine trees on all sides, and there are occasional river crossings and camp sites. I saw more bison warning signs, although I never saw the bison, and the idea of them wandering though this dark forested landscape gave the place a primeval feel. I could almost see what it would have been like here before…
About 25 miles south of Rapid City, South Dakota is a place that I think everyone has seen in pictures, Mount Rushmore. I drove down to see it though the lovely Black Hills, taking my time, and just enjoying the scenery. I expected a famous site like this to be more crowded in the summer months while kids are all on school holidays, but although there were certainly plenty of people there, it never felt overcrowded. It’s designated as a…
I’m not usually one to rave about shopping places. In fact, I’ve been known to go to great lengths to avoid them at all costs. But I had been seeing amusing billboards for Wall Drug for, quite literally, over 300 miles as I drove across South Dakota, and I needed fuel and coffee anyway, so decided to see what it was all about. It turned out to be not so much a single shop as a complex maze of shops,…
Maybe it’s just something about the name, but I’ve always wanted to see the Badlands of South Dakota, although without knowing all that much about them. It’s listed as a National Park, but I’ll say here that I never saw a gate, a ranger, or a visitor’s center. But it’s a big place, so it’s entirely possible that I just missed them. Actually, it’s a huge place, and although I traveled the main drive for a while, I spent most of…