Mt. Rushmore comes into view unexpectedly up in the Black Hills. It looks exactly like the pictures you've seen. But to see it in the middle of those Gaudi-like cake batter mountains, it's far more impressive. How did Borglum carve that out of those?
Rapid City is far more surprising! I was here over a decade ago and the town barely existed. Now you could fill up a 2 week vacation here with all kinds of crazy stuff.
Even though a storm came the kids were begging to go the Reptile Gardens. Their billboard advertising obviously worked, because we drove in an hour before they closed, long after the kids were whooped. This place didn't disappoint and everyone quickly had a second wind.
Grandma and I flipped over all the fossils and perfect skeletons. They actually had
a "pile of turtles" fossil found somewhere in Nebraska. They assume they were hibernating when they got covered. Very, very rare.
Peanut loved the Sky Dome with all the exotic birds. She got a "genuine alligator tooth" and can't wait to show it to her friends back home. She was overcome with the python as were we all. Little Man loved the real alligators almost as much as the giant fake Australian one. He also loved the parrots and the snake wrapped around his branch out of a cage. Doodle loved the alligators and the bouncing bird. She could have watched it all day but I found it very disturbing. I'm against caged birds in the first place. More over, I've seen parrots in the wild and they never acted like that. I'm sure this one was senile.
The storm cleared by the time we got out of there and we took a little drive through town. Funny town. Even funnier were Doodle and Little Man when we got back to the hotel. I asked them what they were doing and they said, "We're having an Ice Picnic" as though it were the most normal thing in the world!
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