Day 6: Yellowstone to Rapid City, SD

 
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton

512 Miles
1 more state (Wyoming to South Dakota)

**We discovered today that my sisters were about to call out the Mounties as we'd been out of contact for 2 whole days! Thank God somebody cared, but we're fine!
Long day, short post! We were on the road for nearly 11 hours today, with only a couple of stops (most notably, Mt. Rushmore). We crossed 3 major mountain ranges (out of Yellowstone, Bighorn National Forest, and the Black Hills of South Dakota), and saw more beautiful country (and a whole lot of not-so-beautiful country).

Our final destination (on this half of the trip) is New Castle, New Hampshire, and today we went through Newcastle, Wyoming. Not quite the same town. Two notable observations from this Newcastle:

1) Sign on the Newcastle Motel: "Just Like Home!" (They forgot to add, "if your home is a shithole.")

2) Sign on the Newcastle Market: "Budweiser Sold Here! Drive-Thru for Beer!"

After seeing Mt. Rushmore (remarkably classy and non-kitchy) we drove to Rapid City, SD.

The route there had more bad tourist attractions in 10 square miles than I've ever seen, including Reptile World, The Amazing Maze (a 20-foot square, 6 foot high, wooden structure), the Flintstones Campground and Amusement Park, Sitting Bull's Mystery Cave, Dinosaur Park, numerous water slides and mini-golf courses, several Wild West shows...you get the idea.

As we began looking for a motel, the best we could find advertised "Furnished rooms." Needless to say, we kept driving! On to more middle-America tomorrow!

"1-2 people rooms.  Furnished."