June 22nd - Rapid City

Will woke me up early-ish so we could go down and get breakfast in the hotel’s breakfast room. There were donuts, toast, cereal, oatmeal (porridge), some fruit and even fresh waffles! Though we had to line up to make them ourselves. There was also coffee, different teas and orange and apple juice. So we filled up – the fresh waffles were so good! First American waffles that I’ve had! Yum!

After breakfast we walked into town to have a look at what Rapid City has to offer. Not a whole lot, but I still managed to get a ski jacket half price. A Burton one, that was at the bargain price of $120. Not like the $300 or $400 ones at home! The guy at the store said it was a couple of years old, but that means it would be fashionable in Australia as they are always a bit behind hehe.

So we wandered around town and looked in a couple of stores. The first bookshop we went into had kayaks and gifts, but didn’t have the Lonely Plant Canada book we were looking for. Neither did the second travel store, but we did talk to the lady there for a while and she told us there was live music on Thursday nights outside her store and also that Deadwood was a pretty wild place to party for 4^th of July! She said that the area was divided between those who partied and those who went camping and hiking for the weekend. We will be in the former hehe. And as always, she knows someone who lives in Australia, but rather than Sydney, she said she knows someone who is in Tassie, but she couldn’t remember where. Random!

Next we stopped off at the local guitar shop to check out their products. I’ve wanted to get a guitar since now I have lots of time to practise! They had a few but I was torn between nylon and steel strings! I decided to think about and come back. They did have some nice guitars there, but they said their main store is out of the CBD.

We kept wandering and found the second hand bookshop of my dreams – shelves and shelves of classics, thrillers, history books and so on. I spent a good half an hour there, just browsing the shelves while Will rested his feet.

Will's buffalo burger - with blue cheese!

We stopped for lunch at the Firehouse Brewery, which I read about in Lonely Planet. It was pretty popular – there were heaps of people in the outside seating area. Will had his first buffalo burger! I had the soup and salad (white bean soup and Caesar salad). I had the drinks special – rum punch ($3.50), which was quite alcoholic! Will had a pint of their microbrew – some kind of scary looking, rich tasting stout. 

An interesting thing about Rapid City is the president statues that are scattered all around the city. We saw JFK, Woodrow Wilson, George Washington and a few more, but apparently they are all there! Quite interesting! It’s quite a pretty little city, but the CBD is quite small. We didn’t really want to go out to the malls (which looked small too). Rapid City has a population of about 60,000 people.

It was getting hot and we were a bit tired so we walked back to the hotel. We hung out and I managed to watch about eight episodes of America’s Next Top Model before Will asked me to change the channel! Definitely got my fix of trashy TV and bitchiness! Dinner that night was pizza and buffalo wings from Papa John’s. The wings were delicious! And so was the pizza J. A nice quiet night in, watching more TV.