On our final day in the Rapid City area we drove to the nearby (well, about 1hr 20) ‘Wind Cave National Park’. As the name suggests, this is primarily a large cave complex which you can tour, designated a National Park area with various hikes up on the surface as well. We were a little worried about being able to get tickets to the cave tours as apparently they sell out very quickly after the visitor centre opens at 8am,…
This is just a quick post about our second day in Rapid City, and one of the reasons we chose to stay here was its close proximity to Mount Rushmore, which we were keen to visit, so we spent the first part of the day at this National Memorial site…and it did not disappoint. The main attraction was obviously the presidents faces carved into the rock side, which is located in the Black Hills in South Dakota, and in case…
After a couple of days in Billings, Montana we moved on to our penultimate stop in a town called Rapid City. This marks our move into our fifth US state of the trip as well, South Dakota. It was a long drive to get there but we made a stop on the way at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. This marks the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn “on June 25–26, 1876, where a combined force of…
After 5 days in Yellowstone we were ready to move on again, this time the destination was Billings, Montana, which is a city just under 4 hours drive away. Before we left we decided to head to Running Bear Pancake House for some breakfast. Again, this is a place we’d read about online and got great reviews, therefore it wasn’t a surprise when we had to wait 20 minutes for a table. It was worth it though as the pancakes…
After our day at Big Sky which was outside of the Yellowstone NP, we returned to the National Park itself for our last 2 days in the area. We were concerned about the weather as it was forecast to be rainy a lot over the weekend, but actually it turned out pretty nice, and we didn’t get soaked like we had on our first day there! It was cooler, but mostly clear and even sunny in spells. Yellowstone Day 2…
Today we went to Big Sky, which is about an hour drive from Yellowstone. Big Sky is best known for being a popular ski resort, but I’d read about a hike there which is listed on some websites as being in the world’s top 10 list of hikes. As you know we have done our fair share of hiking, so we were keen to put this one to the test. So, we set off in great anticipation and good spirits……
Today we moved on from Victor and travelled to our third national park of the trip…Yellowstone. This is such a vast park that it spans 3 states, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho (although it’s mostly in Wyoming) so I’m not sure we will be seeing it all, but we will do our best over the next 4 days. The route was just over 2 hours so not too bad and after we packed up the car we stopped off at a…
On our second day in Grand Teton National Park we went to do some more hiking and started at a place Lucy was particularly keen to visit – Taggart Lake. It was a total 7.5 mile hike as we went on past Taggart Lake itself (photos above) to a second lake called Bradley Lake (photos below). There’s loads of these little forest rodents, which are either Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels or Least Chipmunks according to our guide, which always scurry around,…
Today (day 5) we moved on from our one night stop over in Rock Springs and moved onto a town called Victor which is where we will be staying for the next 4 nights as we explore our second National Park of the trip…Grand Teton NP. Fortunately unlike yesterday’s drive this one was a mere 3hr 20min, so short in comparison. As we got on the road we had to make one crucial stop before leaving Rock Springs and that…
On our third day in the Rocky Mountains we went back in to the park to do another hike, this time a steep uphill climb called Deer Mountain, around 6.4 miles there and back and about 1400 ft elevation gain to reach the peak at about 10,000 ft. We headed out early so we could get the walk done before it was busy and to get back home for lunch if possible. We didn’t pass many other hikers on route…