People always ask us how we manage to do so many things when we travel into an area. The answer? Tom puts together detailed (but flexible) itineraries. If something falls through, he has 3 alternatives. Plus we are always on the move. This is a sample itinerary based on our trip to South Dakota. …
South Dakota
Carved in Stone: Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials
Both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials are in the Black Hills of South Dakota. And both are colossal sculptures of important figures in American history carved into granite. They were both carved by an intensely visionary and sculptor who had tremendous determination in shaping the project and in overcoming all obstacles. Each artist …
The Beauty and Variety of South Dakota’s Black Hills
Black Hills tourism all began with Colonel George Armstrong Custer (yes, that Custer—as in massacre). While the Black Hills had been designated an Indian reservation by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, Custer’s regiment, which was conducting a survey of the area, discovered gold. While he wired notice of the find to superiors in a […]
A Day Trip to South Dakota’s Badlands National Park
We began our Badland South Dakota tour in Wall South Dakota, just north of the park’s Pinnacles entrance. The town, as you see on billboards every few hundred feet on the 55 mile drive from Rapid City, is dominated by the Wall Drug store. Once upon a time, it began life as a small-town drug store. […]
A Surprisingly Fun Rapid City
We weren’t expecting much from Rapid City. It was intended solely as a take-off point for a tour of some of South Western South Dakota’s parks—Badlands National Park and Custer State Park, which includes sites including the Black Hills, two of North America’s largest cave systems (Jewel Cave and Wind Cave), Mount Rushmore, the Crazy […]