A relaxing few days with more sightseeing mixed in

August 29, 2010
Rapid City/Hermosa, SD

After a couple of nice days of touring, we needed some "down time". And the hot weather returned with a vengeance (102°F at the peak), so it was pretty easy to stay home in the A/C-cooled coach for the most part.

We did get out for a bit, though. On Thursday, we headed into Rapid City for dinner at the "best" place in town, The Corn Exchange". The chef used to work at Henry's End, one of our favorite places in Brooklyn, among other place. We ate there in 2006, and we might have had excessive expectations, as it didn't seem as good this time. Good but not great. Oh, well...

Friday, I did a solo expedition, since Geri wasn't keen to visit the South Dakota Air & Space Museum. She'd been here in the early-1960s, visiting her sister whose husband at the time was stationed here in the Air Force. This facility is located on the edge of Ellsworth Air Force Base, currently home of a B-1B Bomber Squadron. After viewing the large array of planes on display (including a B-29, B-52, and B-1B - talk about a historical sequence) and looking at the inside exhibits, I anted up the $7 to take the bus tour on-base. The primary feature of the tour was the descent into a Minuteman II missile silo. With a pair of B-1B's doing touch-and-gos on the Ellsworth airstrip in the background, it was a nice tour, especially for those of us who remember air raid drills and crawling under the desks in elementary school in the early-1960s.

After a quick stop at the local Cabela's to check out options for personal protection (liking the Taurus "Judge", small 380 Rugers, a 38 Special with laser sighting for Geri and a very interesting Springfield "9") and Wal-Mart for prescriptions (actually two trips since they under-delivered the first time), it was back home for a nice evening with my Honey.

Yesterday, we made out a meal plan and headed back to Rapid City for shopping. On the way, we stopped at Memorial Park, which I recently learned has two actual sections of the Berlin Wall on display. Together with the Cold War-era items on display at Ellsworth, this was another interesting trip back down memory lane. It's a bit of a shock to the system when "historical" things are from when you were growing up. I used to think that "history" meant things up through the Revolution and maybe the Civil Wars. Hmmm.

Anyway, click here for Ellsworth pictures and here for Berlin Wall photos...