Mountains, bears and trains, oh my

For us, it was a fairly leisurely day.  I had a long night so we took it easy today, heading south from Rapid City to Hill City.  Hill City is really a misnomer.  It is another beach town with no beach.  A one and half block Main St, houses, lots of tourist shops, a couple of restaurants, and a “museum”  that is really a rock store.

On the way here, we did some shopping in Rapid City - I do like that town.  And then went on to Bear Country USA - a drive thru park.  We had a little hesitation about taking a rental thru one of those animals roam free places, but only a little and ultimately decided Alamo would cope.  After all - it wasn’t like it was a rag top or anything.

So we drove and saw elk and dear and sheep, but the bears were really the coolest.  I’ve never been so close to live bears - grizzlies, black bears, brown bears, bears of all races, colors, and creeds.  I have to say, I don’t plan to ever be so close to live bears again.  And I certainly do NOT want to meet any on some hiking trail.  Yet another reason why things like camping are out of the question.  The bears did, however, remind me greatly of my father.

En route we stopped for lunch and samples at a local winery.  Okay, truth be told, Red Ass Rhubarb wine was too curious to pass up.  Lunch was good.  The wine okay (very sweet.) The winery, eh when they learned we were from CT and they couldn't ship their wine there.  Rather disappointing.

 When we got to Hill City, we had an hour or so to kill before our big event:  the 1880’s train.  We walked the town and that killed a half hour or so.

The train was very cool.  It rambles for an hour between Hill City and Keystone (where Mt Rushmore is).  Along the way I was surprised to see houses.  The train basically runs through a few people’s back yards.  But there were also deer (fully grown white tail - one climbed under a fence - really - and two  spotted fawns cavorting in a mountain meadow - really - and  a gopher, and even a lizard that was the biggest I’ve ever seen.

We were going to go to the “nice” restaurant in town, until we were told it was an hour wait.  We thought not and ended up at the other end of the block where everything was just as good and I suspect the food more local.  M. had buffalo steak and b/c I have been pushing at my system a little hard, I had walleye.  We’re happy to have thus far, been very culinarily lucky, b/c I think the bad options are really, really bad.

The big stone carvings are tomorrow.