By: Ana Alexander
Uncategorized

South Dakota: Great Faces, Great Places

Do you ever get the 11 p.m. Tuesday night travel blues? You know, where you spontaneously book a room at a bed and breakfast nine and a half hours away so you can make a road trip to a national monument?

It can’t just be me.

Or at least it shouldn’t be.

About a week ago, my friend Kate texted me, asking if we could hang out over the weekend, as she was feeling stir-crazy. We decided on a weekend of working on our blogs and drinking wine, which sounded like a delightful time.

But come Monday morning, a coworker was telling me about a city in Montana she thought I’d like to visit, and mentioned that she wanted to travel there over the summer, as well as make a stop at Mount Rushmore.

I told her that I’d always wanted to go to Mount Rushmore, and had asked several friends to spontaneously go with me a few weeks prior, but everyone was busy.

“You should go this weekend!” She said.

“Okay!” I responded.

So I texted Kate and asked her how much of an adventure she wanted to go on. Twenty-four hours later, we’d booked our Airbnb with John and Darcy, the greatest people in South Dakota. More on that later.

So on Friday afternoon, we got in the car and drove….30 minutes to Target.

We had a slight problem: our radio was unreliable, we’d broken our portable speaker a few months prior in Kansas City, and we had a nine and a half hour drive ahead of us.

We decided to make a pit stop at Target to buy a CD.

That’s right! A pair of millennials saving the CD industry one road trip at a time! Take that ageists!

We thought it would be fun/torturous to only allow ourselves to pick out one CD, and thought long and hard during our drive on which CD we wanted to buy. Kate came up with a brilliant idea: buying one of the thousands of editions of Now That’s What I Call Music.

We weren’t sure if they were still cranking out Now CDs, but as it turns out, they are! They’re up to 98, not counting their 3 million spin-off CDs. However, we picked out Now That’s What I Call the 00’s, which included bangers like Hot in Herre by Nelly and Bye Bye Bye by NSYNC.

The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack also caught my attention, both because it would be ironic to listen to the same soundtrack for nine hours as the one that Peter Quill listens to on repeat for his entire life, and because “Hooked on a Feeling” is a song begging to be a road trip anthem. Which it became.

We also picked up Sam Smith’s new album, because he is an angel and we needed some heavenly tunes to carry us across state borders. Torn deciding, we decided we’d have all three.

And with that, we set off on our adventure to the tunes of Blue Swede!

By 9:30 p.m., we’d reached our bed and breakfast – White Tail Ridge Bed and Breakfast. I’d highly recommend it if you ever get a chance to travel to or through Hermosa, South Dakota.

I woke up early that morning to catch a glimpse of the sunrise coming over the hill that White Tail Ridge is nestled in.

They had a row of white rocking chairs that I sat on, drinking coffee and taking in the view.

And boy, was it beautiful.

After a few moments, the cutest cat with the bluest eyes padded over and decided I was her best friend. I found out later that her name was Rudee, but I creatively called her “Meow Meow” for the duration of the trip.

Meow Meow and I watched the sun lift itself into a lilac and blue sky, leaving a trail of yellow and orange in its wake.

After awhile, I went back inside, where Darcy was cooking breakfast. It was probably the most beautiful breakfast I’ve ever had.

Darcy cooked us Southwest-style scrambled eggs, with fresh vegetables and salsa.

I’m hungry all over again. Darcy also cooked us cheesy hash browns, and warm baked apples covered in streusel and drizzled with a gooey caramel sauce. Good God.

I’ve always said that I’m a person with few regrets. Well, one of those few regrets is only eating one of those apples.

Darcy and John joined us for a cup of coffee, and we chatted about our plans for the day. They were hilarious and kind, giving us suggestions for our trip. They even gave us a list of their favorite restaurants in the area and a map, which they used to point out all of the scenic routes to the locations we wanted to go to.

After we finished our coffee and gathered our belongings, we once again hit the road. The landscape was stunning – though there were many hills, everything felt incredibly open. With our trusty Guardians of the Galaxy CD blasting, we made it to the Black Hills National Forest, where we pulled over to take a photo. I left my car door wide open as I hopped out to snap a picture, and a few minutes later, Kate followed suit. I cranked up the music in the car, and with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” blasting through our open car doors, we had a mini dance party in the Black Hills.

Potentially the happiest we’ve ever been, we continued our drive through the Black Hills. John had told us to take the Iron Mountain Road, which sounds like something you’d hear in Game of Thrones, but actually leads to a giant monument of our Founding Fathers. John told us that there were three tunnels we’d have to drive through on the route, and that we could pull over and take pictures of them if we wanted to.

John told us that if we made sure to pull over at the third tunnel, we would get our first glimpse of Mount Rushmore through it.

It was pretty neat!

After winding through pine trees and towering rock formations, we made it. I tracked down a stamp for my new National Parks Passport, and we headed toward the monument.

There were a few things I found surprising about the monument itself. First, due to the surprisingly open landscape in the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore is visible from a variety of locations, even from pretty distant spots. With the Grand Canyon, you have to walk a bit into the park before the depth and magnitude of the canyon rushes into your line of sight. With Mount Rushmore, we were able to catch glimpses of it far before we ever made it to the park, and even got a pretty great view of it on one of the roads on the way to the park.

Second, the eyeballs. I don’t know why this disturbed me, but if you look up close, their eyes are actually hollowed out with giant squares at the center. From a distance, the sculptures are absolutely remarkable in how realistic they are, especially with the scale they’re at. But upon visiting the museum on site, and seeing pictures and small scale models of the sculptures, the eyeballs really weirded me out. I don’t know, maybe their nearly hollowed out eyes reminded me a bit of the Three Sisters of Fate in Greek mythology, except instead of all sharing one eye they just had an extra band member.

We perused the park for awhile, which was beautifully devoid of other people. As it’s the park’s “off” season, there were only about fifteen other people there, so we were by no means fighting for a view of Mount Rushmore.

Next, we headed to Crazy Horse. On the way, we stopped to see the profile view of Washington.

When we arrived at Crazy Horse, we walked around their museum for a bit, where they had gorgeous displays of Lakota beadwork and elaborate headdresses.

In the distance, you can see the actual monument, which is currently a work-in-progress.

You can see they’ve begun carving the shape of the horse’s head. Work on the sculpture began in 1948, and it’s expected that many more years of work will be needed to complete it; it’s currently the world’s largest mountain carving in progress.

Upon John’s suggestion, we stopped at the Laughing Water restaurant onsite, where they serve Native American tacos on fry bread, which was so. Damn. Good.

It was also the largest taco I’ve ever seen. Which did not stop me from trying their Tatanka stew, which featured tender cuts of Black Hills buffalo, slow-cooked with carrots, peas, potatoes, and onions, all simmered in a special blend of seasonings.

10/10 recommend. We asked for a cup of coffee to go, as it was a bit chilly outside, and attempted to get back into the museum, where there was a room of windows facing the monument that we wanted to check out. But alas, our coffee was not allowed.

 

Kate wanted to leave her cup of coffee outside, hidden behind one of the wooden beams at the canopy, while we checked out the room.

“Kate. It says ‘No smoking food or drinks,'” I said. “Our coffee isn’t smoking.”

She laughed and asked if I thought that logic would really fly with the museum attendants.

“Well, there aren’t any commas in that sentence! If they didn’t want any smoking, food, or drinks, they would have included commas, but they chose not to,” I said. “There’s not even an Oxford!”

Then, and ignorant man walked by and defaced the English language by saying, “The Oxford Comma is useless in the American English language.”

“How dare you!” I said, appalled. “Do you want to take this outside? I don’t mess around when it comes to syntax!”

He and his friend shook their heads and laughed, presumably at the propriety of the English language.

I threw my cup of coffee in the trash, where the opinions of those gentlemen belonged, while Kate stashed her cup outside, and we took a stroll through the room of windows.

Next, we made our way to Wind Cave National Park, and on our way, we stumbled upon a lone buffalo!

We stopped to ask him for directions to the Wind Caves, but he didn’t really seem like he knew where they were.

When we arrived at the Wind Caves, we discovered that the next tour wouldn’t be taking place for another hour and a half. I’d already gotten a stamp in my National Parks Passport, so we decided to walk around their museum, as well as their gift shop, where I found the 2017 National Parks Passport Stamps!

I excitedly purchased them and immediately placed them throughout my book. As previously mentioned, I was recently led astray by a Grand Canyon Park Ranger, who did not stop me from placing my Grand Canyon cancellation stamp where the physical sticker stamp belonged. As a result, my Grand Canyon stamp is now covered by the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument stamp, which only means that I will have to return to the Grand Canyon, which may or may not be a list item on my 15 before 30 list (Yes, I am already drafting my next list, for when I complete my 25 Things list).

Without having toured the magnificent caves, we drove to Beaver Creek Bridge, which was beautiful.

Have I mentioned my thing about being on the edge?

A tiny river sliced the landscape in half, and ran under the bridge, petering out on the other side and disappearing into pine trees and rock.

After we’d had our fill of the bridge,we began driving toward Custer State Park, making a pit stop along the way to watch the adorable little ground hogs popping in and out of the grand. We spotted a fire tower in the distance, which looked like it would have a crazy beautiful view, so I made Kate drive us toward the base of the hill, and we hiked all the way to the top.

The fire tower was a little ways away, but it was well worth it. I was so excited I could barely stand it!

Sadly, when we finally got to the top of the hill, the stairs were roped off with a sign that said “No entry.” I would have been bummed to miss out on that view, but the view we’d already had was pretty amazing.

There was a little sign at the top of the hill that informed us that the air we were breathing was the purest of air. Because the area is a Class 1 Airshed, it has superior air quality, which is actually used as a benchmark in scientific studies of air pollution.

After taking in the views and enjoying the crisp air, we hiked back down and made our way to Custer State Park, where all of the animals were evidently in hiding. We were promised by multiple people that we would see herds of donkeys that would approach our vehicle, but they were nowhere to be seen. We saw a pair of bison in the distance, and a plethora of pronghorn, but that was about it.

Exhausted from our long day of adventuring, we decided to drive to Rapid City for a beer at Firehouse Brewery, which was, in fact, a mistake.

Firehouse Brewery is the worst. Their beer is fine – it’s nothing to write home about, and it’s certainly no Boulevard beer, but it’s decent. However, their business model angered me, and I will never return.

Here’s why.

At a brewery, one would expect that the beer would be at the forefront, correct? It’s a brewery. The whole business is beer. However, upon being seated at a table, we found that there was no beer list. There were lists for cocktails, and a whole food menu, but nothing about beer to be seen. Confused and thinking we must have been seated a table where the beer menu walked off, we asked our waiter if they had a beer list.

He looked equally puzzled as he informed us that they did not have beer menus, but their beers were listed on screens throughout the restaurant, of which there were about four.

To show you why that is so utterly absurd, here’s an actual image of the closest screen to us.

“Where’s the screen?” you may be asking. Oh, it’s the glowing white rectangle that is hidden behind the railing, just above the table in the center of the image. To make matters worse, while we were ordering, and for the majority of the time we were at Firehouse, there was a couple eating dinner at this table, so I had to stare at a screen hidden behind a railing just past them while they were trying to have a nice dinner, and I was just trying to read the beer list.

If you think that’s ridiculous, you are correct. But wait! There’s more! About every thirty seconds, the screen would flicker and change to an advertisement, so you couldn’t even read the list. It took me an absurd amount of time to read the list, and I eventually gave up and ordered the Firehouse Red to save myself some time and frustration.

We both decided we hated Firehouse, so we finished our beers and picked out an Italian restaurant, Botticelli’s, for dinner instead, which was a much better choice.

Going steadily into a carb coma, we drove back to our lovely B&B for the evening, and got a good night’s rest, before our final tour of Rapid City and trek to the Badlands the next day.

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