Rapid City to Cheyenne - real cowboy country

We headed off to see Mount Rushmore in the daylight before leaving Rapid City.

But before that, we had one last walk around the town centre and found a really cool exercise area in the lovely Memorial Park just across the Plaza from the hotel. Maurice and I got quite competitive playing with the beepy tennis thing. 

Then on to Rushmore for yet more pics and the obligatory selfie.

Mount Rushmore images - 20 pics

Heading to Cheyenne, we detoured to Custer State Park and took the Wildlife loop. Here we were treated to wonderful open spaces and our first live Bison! We also saw deer, prairie dogs and burros - wild mules that seem to just stand and look vacant most of the time.

Custer State Park and Wildlife Loop - 54 images (but worth it!)

We took so long to drive to Cheyenne that we had a very late lunch at a rather random truck stop in Lusk.  

We didn't get to Cheyenne until after dark and the hotel was definitely nothing special.

You can read my review of the hotel here.

However, we had an unexpectedly great night out in Cheyenne.

Unexpected for a Monday. Unexpected for Cheyenne.

We started off in Sanford's Cheyenne (turns out it was a chain and much like the one in Rapid City, sans grumpy waitress). Then progressed to a bar called the Crown where a really great band were playing. Turns out they had a truck breakdown and had to detour en route to Denver so they just pitched up to play at the bar. We were also treated to two young guys presenting a homeless man with a zucchini for some reason, known only to them. I was in hysterics, so they tried to explain the story to me, but really it was quite mad. They had carried this zucchini around with them all day only to have the guy look askance at them when they gave it to him.

Anyway, a mad and slightly drunken night - probably just as well since the hotel was nothing to write home about.