A busy, touristy day in the Rapid City, SD area

Whew! Yesterday was a busy, touristy type of a day. It started when we went to Mt. Rushmore, 20 miles away. It's very awe inspiring and makes you feel patriotic. We watched the short movie about how it came to be and learned cool things like how they make the eyes look bright.

From there we went to the Crazy Horse Memorial, that our friends, Rick & Susan recommended we see. Turns out it was $20 per car. That was more than we were willing to pay to see a head, so we snapped a quick picture and turned around. The picture is from far away, but it's as close as we could get without paying.

So we continued our touristy day by heading back towards the Mt. Rushmore area to a town called Keystone to ride the alpine slide! It was a bit more than the head statue, but a lot more fun. The first time Rich was behind me as we whipped down the track. The 2nd run, we ran on tracks opposite each other in a race. I hit the first curve at full throttle and got sling-shotted (is that a word?) ahead of him. I went so fast that I kinda scared myself. Whew! Guess I need to start practicing my fearlessness in preparation for the downhill mountain biking we're going to be doing in Salt Lake in July!

After the alpine slide, we had one more stop, at Reptile Gardens, which is within 3 miles of our campground. We'd passed it several times and thought it looked touristy. But since we were having a touristy day, we thought we'd check it out. They had a lot more than just reptiles! The big exhibit was the tropical forest in a dome. When you walk through the door, you are greeted by a cockatoo! In addition to a few reptiles, they had an assortment of macaws, an eclectus, an amazon and a few doves. Outside they had a prairie dog display. These were much bigger dogs than the 2 Rich squished on the road in Montana! There was also a giant tortoise display with a tortoise that you could rub on the neck. He seemed to like it.

After that exciting day we came home to a very happy Snuggles who had been lonely all day. She got to meet a little dog named "Sweetie", so of course she greeted it with her favorite word, "Hi Sweeter!"

-Laura