Christina and Robert's Cross-Country Trip: Part 8
Wednesday we drove to Badlands, stopping for the night in Wall, SD--home of the much-advertised Wall Drugs. It was 93 degrees at 6pm, and there is no shade in SD and very little of anything else. We only took 2 small walks and 1 scenic drive through the Natl. Park because it was so hot. We did take a 3 mile, "microhop" helicopter ride over the park, $25 for both of us, which was a great and very exciting way to see the park and also neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before. We saw a prairie dog town--they really do just stand up there and stare off into the distance. We spent the night in a bizarre cabin-like motel in the town of Wall with no remote and no phone and ate a buffalo burger for dinner, which tasted distinctly different than hamburger.
Thursday morning we went back to Wall Drug after our brief stop there the night before and got free ice water and ice for our cooler. They give free donuts to veterans, truck drivers, and honeymooners, so we got two donuts Wednesday night and two the next morning for free!! They were plain but good cake donuts. Everyone also gets a free bumper sticker which Robert would not let me stick onto Norman, and then we bought a homemade ice cream, but even then we don't think they made a profit off of us.
Then we drove to Rapid City and went to a really good cave tour in the Black Hills, the Black Hills Caverns. It took 1.5 hours and we walked on lighted paths most of the way, but then the tour guide took the more adventurous ones on a crawling detour lit only by flashlights. It was very cool--you had to get on your back and hands and knees in the really cool, chalky sand. Then we did a little gem panning, which was neater than Robert had expected, and got nice rocks plus tiny shards of fool's gold and red garnet. Then we went to Trout Haven for dinner, where they give you a fishing pole and bait and you fish for trout in their little lake. You pay only for what you catch, by the inch, and then they take it off the hook and clean it and cook it for you.
We ate it right there, and it was great!! We went to Mt. Rushmore after dinner, and then drove along a bizarrely narrow winding mountain road with long one-lane tunnels too narrow for a Cadillac that finally turned into a gravel road and then into the Needles Highway at sunset. We got out and hiked around the needles a few times, and then we drove past Crazy Horse lit up in the dark--they just finished his head, in 50 years. We want to come back on our 50th anniv. and maybe see his horse.