Mt. Rushmore and South Dakota

We started out from office early on Friday 22/04/2005 and headed for the car rental agency also in downtown. After lot of deliberations and not finding one to our liking in mid size, we decided to go for a slightly expensive but really cool Jaguar. Yes! the trip was of to a wonderful start and we were out of Minneapolis by 6:30 PM.
The drive was fabulous with scenic views of the vast grasslands of the American countryside. It was fun sitting in the Jaguar, just a really cool and fast car. We made good progress through the night and were at Rapid City at 3 am. (Helped by 1 hr time difference). We checked into out hotel and hit the beds and it wasn’t until 10 am that we were up and ready to head to our first destination.


Mt. Rushmore 

This of course was Mount Rushmore. The drive again was very pleasant the place was reasonably good. We didn’t expect to see anything great and we weren't surprised. We took some snaps, spent some time there also had ice-creams (temp was around 5-10 C).
It was almost 12pm and we headed towards Custer state park, through Black Hill forest. Driving through Black Hills was refreshing with conifers on either side of the road and ice around the road that had not yet melted.


Wild Buffaloes at Custer Park 

We were hoping to see some Wild buffaloes at Custer Park and we were not disappointed. We saw some herds and even managed to get some good snaps, thanks to me sticking my head out of the moonlight roof of the Jaguar. We did spot some Ponies and Deers too and we continued to drive till we reached Jewel cave. We learnt that the full 1 hr tour was over for the day and we could only go in for the "Discovery" tour down to the first cave. The tour lasted only 20 minutes and we weren't very impressed, neither did the snaps come out okay. However we were excited contemplating how the full tour inside the cave might have been.
It was almost 5 and we decided to head back to our hotel and go out in the evening. The plan was to visit a Casino and we did find one in "Deadwood", an hours drive from where we were staying. It was my first time in a Casino and the results were encouraging. I doubled the money I put in, while playing 'Blackjack'(in one hour that too). I did a smart thing by having learnt how to play it and practicing it on Yahoo. We had dinner outside headed to our hotel.


Badlands 

Next day we started back home at 9:00AM. We planned to cover 'Badlands' and ‘Sioux falls’ on the way back. ‘Badlands’ was a pleasant surprise with excellent scenery and some what resembling Grand canyon!! It was a long byway - around 60 miles, we spent an hour there.
'Sioux falls' is probably a misnomer as the height of the Water-fall was only 5-6 meters. It’s more like a park. However one interesting thing is that a train passes over the falls.
Interesting ahah!!
All in All a Good weekend, had a nice time, but don't think I would be visiting South Dakota again.