Rapid City, South Dakota, United States
Hey Actifitters,
Well, I was so tired yesterday that even though I prepared all the photos for my daily Actifit Report, I forgot to actually publish it before I fell asleep! It had some nice photos with Le Chat and Kaia for our last walk before my trip. So anyways, too late now, I'll just skip it. The reason I was so tired is that as usual I didn't have time to sleep at all before our very early flights heading to Rapid City, South Dakota. We got there mid morning, and since the plan was to stay in Keystone for the race Saturday morning, we couldn't plan anything big, and for sure no hiking, just before the race (Mount Rushmore half marathon). So instead, we just went into town to kill a few hours. I had read it was a nice little town with a few quirky spots to check. We started at the Main Street Square.
With also a few cool wall art pieces.
But of course, we quickly started to see the main attraction, the City of Presidents and all the statues.
In addition to a few statues of natives, all US presidents are featured at the corners of some of the main streets. 44 presidents to be exact because Joe Biden's statue isn't there yet. I'll show a sample of the ones we checked out.
Also liked how some people managed to make the dumpsters almost look good!
A cool brewery built at a former fire station, or at least that's what it looked like.
And of course more presidents, including my favorite Barack Obama.
At some point, you kind of get tired of seeing these statues. It was time to move on to another very quirky attraction, Dinosaur Park. Just a small hill with more statues, big dinosaurs statues this time.
The best part isn't the statues though, but the incredible 360 view you get from up there.
In the mountains far away, you can even see Mount Rushmore, although I don't really remember which one it was.
And more dinos, even in front of the gift shop.
I'm sure there are a few more things to check out in Rapid City, but we just headed to Keystone after that. We had to check into our hotel and the expo where to pick up my bib for the race was closing rather early. Keystone is very small but it also has a few nice things to check out. First the old school boardwalk. Pretty cool.
An old steam train from the 19th century.
And best of all, the biggest big foot in the world!
This is actually chainsaw art. That open air shop called Dahl's Chainsaw Art had some very impressive pieces, including some humongous ones.
We finished this already very long day with a pasta dinner, the perfect carbs loading dish for the race the next morning.
Quirky was probably the word of the day, with plenty of attractions going full kitsch. But that was a pretty good day, let's see how the rest of the trip goes after the race.
As always, thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow.
