schellsontheroad2014.blogspot.com: Hello from Rapid City, SD on this Holiday Weekend

To all of our American heroes, past and present, thank you for your service. Let us not forget the real reason we all celebrate this Memorial Day weekend. It is wonderful to get together with family and friends but we all need to remember that it isn't just an extra day(s) off work but a day to take a few minutes to think about the freedoms we all enjoy thanks to these wonderful men and women. God Bless them all!!

We had an uneventful trip from Cheyenne to Rapid City on Monday. An RVer always likes 'uneventful' trips. It was a total of about 340 miles, with some interstate and a new route for us on some state highways that brought us right into Rapid City almost right next door to the campground.

South Dakota has had a long and cold winter so even though we've had a little rain this week, lots of wind (pretty common here), and some sun here and there, the locals definitely think that spring has arrived. Temps have varied from 40's in the mornings, to low 70's by afternoon. Most afternoons you see the storm clouds forming off in the distance and some move away from us and others have brought a little rain but nothing serious. We have been here several times so we've done the touristy things here at least once, some of them twice, so we decided to try and find a few new things to do this trip as we had decided to spend the holiday weekend here and not be on the road.

Tuesday we renewed our SD drivers licenses for another five years which was our main reason for coming here this year. SD is very RV friendly and so this was an easy process and within 20 minutes we were out the door with our new licenses. We ran a few errands after that and then came home to plot what we wanted to do this week.

Some former 'neighbors' here at this park in 2011, Herb & Ginger, had told us that they had some friends from VT that would be arriving sometime this week to become SD residents & register their new motor home, etc. We were on the lookout for them and turns out they are parked right across the street from us so we've had some nice visits with Larry & Suzette, and their dog, Logan. They are relatively new 'full timers' with a beautiful new motor home and so we shared stories about our RVing days. We went to dinner at Sanfords (I wrote about this restaurant last year in the blog…..it is the one with rooms of antiques, junk, whatever these folks could find they decorated the restaurant with). The food was good and it was nice to share Sanfords with Larry & Suzette.

One of the things we hadn't done here was the SD Air & Space Museum so we checked that out on Thursday. This museum gets very nice reviews online and we couldn't agree more. It is next to Ellsworth Air Force Base here in Box Elder, and there are over 30 historic aircraft on display, both inside and out. We were just in time to take a base tour which included a stop at a minuteman training missile silo which was very interesting. A very worthwhile stop, we learned a lot, and better yet the museum is free. The bus tour does cost $8 I believe.

Another museum we hadn't visited was the Journey Museum which takes you on a journey through time here in the Black Hills. We watched an interesting film called 'Over the Black Hills" and it was entirely an aerial view of western SD. Beautiful countryside! There are many exhibits and galleries in this museum from geology, to archaeology, to a Sioux Indian Museum, Pioneer times, and a gallery called the Adelstein Gallery, where the exhibit changes periodically but usually relating to the local area. This particular gallery can be also rented out by private parties and while we were there they were taking pictures to show someone who is interested in renting it for a wedding reception. There are also many other smaller exhibits such as an Aviary Room where there are over 9 dozen stuffed birds and animals from the Black Hills area. Another enjoyable learning experience.

There are a lot of things to see and do here in this area so definitely a 'must see' if you are passing through. Of course, the most well known is Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Sturgis about 30 miles away, home of the huge motorcycle rally later this summer, and the list goes on.

We will leave Rapid City on Tuesday heading to Pender, NE and a stop at Blue Ox, our tow bar company for a check up on that system.

Until next week……..please remember freedom isn't free.