Sept 13, Monday

States seen: Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota (new)

Monday morning we were able to relax a little more, so we
went to Legacy Coffee Roasters, 

…got some coffee and pastries, then walked
around the city a bit 

…before heading off around 8ish. 

We didn’t need to get on
the road too early since we had much less distance to drive this day. We were
only driving 5-6 hours to Rapid City, South Dakota, but we wanted to get there
early enough to see Mount Rushmore.

We headed out I-90 east, to US-212, passed through the
northeast corner of Wyoming and farmland, 

and into South Dakota, 

…through
Sturgis and into Rapid City.

We dropped off our stuff at the Alex Johnson Hotel, 

…then
headed south to see Mount Rushmore, where some guy carved some other guy’s
faces into some rocks. 

This is a very serious monument and would probably be
there 10s of thousands of years from now: the kind of thing future cultures
would look at and appreciate.

There are other really great (so I’m told) things to do
around Rapid City, but we didn’t have time for them.

Went back and ate at the rooftop Hotel restaurant- the
Vertex, where we got some great photos of the sunset and city lights.

The Alex Johnson is a well-known hotel. Something like 6
presidents have stayed there.

But it was built in 1928, and while it was cool, the HVAC
units they had for the room somehow made it kind of uncomfortable. I woke up
around 3 am and didn’t get back to sleep. Shell was bothered by the smell of
the room…. I dunno. I wanted to like it, but it wasn’t a comfortable night.