After leaving Devils Tower National Monument, I head to Rapid City, SD where I’ll stay about a month. While there I need to get my South Dakota driver’s license, visit the social security office, my bank and take care of some other personal business matters. Also, I have a few minor warranty repairs on the Nash that need to be taken care of.  I haven’t been stationary long enough to see to them up until now.

During my time here, the weather was unusually wet.  It rained and was overcast and windy nearly every day.  Between the poor weather and the amount of time I had to spend on taking care of business matters and the Nash repairs, I didn’t get out as much as I had hoped.

On one particularly nice day, I went up to Spearfish and drove through Spearfish Canyon. I did some hikes also which was enjoyable.  The forest here is mostly evergreen, but there are some aspen and hardwoods.  This canyon is mentioned as one of the nicer areas to see fall color, it was pretty.

Another day I drove over to Badlands National Park. I didn’t get an early start so it was midday by the time I arrive.  Not the best time for photos of this area. The colors in the rock would show better in morning or evening.

This osprey had killed a prairie dog and was sitting right there eating it while the other prairie dogs were watching.  Poor things!

One area had these yellow mounds.

On the way back to Rapid City, I stopped at Minute Man Missile National Historic Site.  There is a visitor center that recounts the cold war years. Anyone remember duck and cover drills in school??? Like that school desk was really going to provide any protection from a nuclear blast!

A few miles west on I-90 there are decommissioned missile sites that are open to visitors.  It was weird in that there were no signs at the exit to the missile site.  So you had to know what exit to take to get to it.  Maybe they are trying to convey the air of secrecy that surrounded the sites when they were operational.  You can’t actually enter the missile silo but can look down into it thru a plexiglass cover.  There is a phone number to dial for a recording which explains the various components and how they functioned.

It was interesting to see if you are passing through but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to visit it.

Misty engaged in her favorite activity.