9/8/2022
We had a busy day today. We started by visiting the capitol building, Liberty Bell, and the governors mansion.
Next, we visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. This was neat. It showed the history of the Minuteman Missile program and how it related to the cold war. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to go see one of the actual missile sites.
We made our way to Badlands National Park next. We pulled over to see the worlds largest prairie dog and some real ones before we got to the park. When we got to the park we stopped at the Notch trail to do a little hike. I got a lot of cool pics of us hiking and then driving in the park.
We went to Wall Drug for lunch. Ashley hasn’t seen it before so I decided to show her all the touristy crap. We stopped at the National Grasslands Visitor Center to get a stamp on the way out.
Next we went to the SD Air and Space Museum on our way to Mt. Rushmore. They had a lot of cool aircraft, including a B-1. As we were driving to the museum we actually got to see a B-1 doing loops around the air base. I’ve never actually seen one flying. They look so big in the air.
Ashley was really excited to see Mt. Rushmore and was exactly as underwhelmed as I expected. We got a sticker and a park stamp and made our way back to Rapid City, SD. I wanted to see the Crazy Horse monument, but that cost $35 and I was not going to pay that much.
Rapid City was fun. We walked around downtown and stopped at a couple of breweries. First we went to Firehouse Brewing Company, but they were packed so we moved on to Hay Camp Brewing. Hay Camp had a great building. Their beer was good, nothing that really stood out though.
We went back to Firehouse after our flight and went upstairs to get some food. They had a special on wings so we hit that up and chatted up the bartender. The wing sauce we had was really good. One of the tables the bartender had, left an untouched plate of nachos and wings when they left. We offered to take them off her hands since she was just going to throw them away (Wooo free food!)
The brewery finally cleared out a bit by the time we finished eating, so we went back down and got a flight before they closed. Their beer was quite good. The standouts were the brown, red, and pale ale. While we were having our last beer, a bottle of ketchup seeming fell from the heavens and exploded behind us. Ashley got some on her pants and it was all over the floor. One of the servers dropped it off the balcony above us.
