Day 57 Keystone to Rapid City 42km

I don't pretend to know what God may or may not want but the good folk at a South Dakota church, wedged between a Christmas Village (get all your Christmas bling in August!) and "old MacDonald's Petting Zoo" seem to have a pretty good idea. The message out the front of their church read "God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts", here, here I say! The short but entertaining ride to Rapid City was peppered with all the worst kinds of large, garish and somewhat improbable attractions to lure you from the highway. I have to say that I was very impressed by the acrobatics of the goats from the aforementioned petting zoo.


We find that our ability to withstand the traffic, pollution, noise and impersonality of cities decreases the longer we spend hopping from one small town to the next. So it was with some trepidation that we approached Rapid City, the second largest city in South Dakota, pop. 67,000. A ride through the city was a necessary evil for food stocks were depleted and Safeway beckoned. But the city library proved to be an even more important stop because it was here that we made our first real and concrete plans for post ride. We have booked return tickets to Switzerland in October, very exciting and very odd to be committed to a date and place when for the last 9 weeks we have only planned day to day. The big city failed to draw us in and we quickly headed out to camp, and the winner of the most expensive campground so far is the Rapid City KOA! But they made up for it with a free s'mores night and some genuinely excellent neighbors who went out of their way to show some of that American hospitality that we have come to know and love.


One final question for our readers? Why have they outlawed those big round bales of hay here in South Dakota? (read tomorrow's blog for the answer) - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad