Day 13

Day 13 July 4th, 2009

Rapid City, SD

After taking the morning to recover from the night before, Tara and I set out to the Heart of the Black Hills, Hill City, SD to have lunch at the Alpine Inn, a place that kept getting recommended. For our Independence Day pleasure we enjoyed hefe-weissen,

wienerschnitzle, bratwurst, spatzle, and potato salad. Fueled up and ready to go, we 1st headed to Mt. Rushmore knowing that it was going to be a zoo. Thankfully the fireworks show was the night before so that reduced the number of people, but not by much. Following pictures

and a brief hike through the exhibits we returned to the car and headed to Sylvan Lake, one of my favorite destinations in the Black Hills. We drove along Needles Highway which winds its way between, over and through some outstanding rock formations and reached Custer State Park. We hiked around Sylvan Lake

and returned to the car with most of the afternoon gone. We decided to squeeze in a trip to the Crazy Horse Memorial Mountain. It was great to see that the face has been completed,

but unfortunate that they no longer let people hike up to the arm of the Memorial. We returned to Downtown Rapid City and chose an Italian restuarant to have dinner. Feeling guilty that we hadn't eaten anything truly American and seeing that a fire was burning in the fire pit of our Garden Cottages Motel, we broke out the S'Mores and offered to share with the other guests and proprieters.

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