Trip To South Dakota

So my goal to keep an active blog hasn’t exactly been met. Anyway, I spent a week in Rapid City, South Dakota visiting family. During my stay in the Black Hills, I took many photos. If you are ever have the chance, I highly recommend you check out South Dakota. It is surprisingly beautiful there. Also, if you are a wild west buff, there are plenty of old towns that host mock gun fights in the streets.

Having already seen Mount Rushmore four or five times before, I wasn’t too excited when my family decided to pay a visit. After all, there is really only one to see at Mount Rushmore. Five minutes passed and I had seen enough. There was a gift shop of course, but every gift shop in South Dakota has the same things: postcards of the main attractions/nation parks, tshirts with wolves on them, leather biker jackets, lame colored rocks that come in those stupid little pouches, shot glasses, knives, and jewelry. If you’ve been to one gift shop, you’ve been to them all. There was also a mini-museum but I’d seen all of it before, besides I can’t imagine much has changed since I’d last visited.

After Mount Rushmore, we went to Sylvan Lake. If you have seen National Treasure 2: Book Of Secrets, it is the place from the scene where Nicholas Cage sticks his arm in that one rock and pulls that pretty lame joke on everyone. They make it seem like the lake is directly behind Mount Rushmore in the movie, but in reality it is in an entirely different location. To give you an idea, Mount Rushmore is in Keystone and Sylvan Lake is in Custer State Park.

Sylvan Lake is gorgeous. The drive up was amazing. I say “up” because the lake is located in the top of the Black Hills. I would have posted some pictures of the drive but I was half unconcious do to lack of sleep. When we got there, we busted out the food right away. As we ate, we watched a bride and some wedding guests run around the lake while all the chairs/tents they set up blew over. Sucks for them. After lunch we rode paddle boats around. Paddle boats seem like a good idea, but that is only if the paddle boat is in full operational order. Lets just say that the pedals could have used an oiling (back in 2006) and that my side had a minor hole in it. Even though with each minute I peddled my knees were slowly developing into those of a 75 year old man’s and with each swoop of my feet I kicked water back at myself, I was in awe at the beauty of the nature.

After paddle boats, we took a hike around the lake. It was very pretty. My family got pissed because I kept stopping to take pictures and were even more pissed that these pictures did not include them.

Three/fourths of the way around the lake I found a large rock structure which I climbed. My cousin and I spent 30-45 minutes trying to find a way to get to the top of one rock form. Well, we found one way, but it would involve a large 10 foot leap onto a 45 degree incline. After seeing the 20 foot drop, we voted on an alternative strategy for reaching this rock. After what can only be described as “shimmying” across narrow cliff, we finally reached a climbable wall. We took our time once we got to the top of the rock. Again, this pissed off the rest of the family of whom we told we would be back “in a jiffy.”

This picture below is from the top of the rock my cousin and I climbed.

After Sylvan Lake we went to Spearfish Canyon, one of my favorite places in South Dakota. The drive was the prettiest of the entire trip.

The main attractions in Spearfish include waterfalls and rivers. This one below is Bridal Veil Falls.

It was a good trip. Again, if you haven’t been to South Dakota before, I really suggest you pay a visit. Hope you enjoyed my photos. You can see a few more on my flickr.

South Dakota Flickr Gallery

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