A Touristy Tour Through Rapid City

This was a nice moderate hotel perfect for what my family needed. We got a reasonable price with our AAA discount, but keep in mind that since Rapid City is such a tourist trap, hotels are somewhat expensive compared to other cities. It was in a nicer part of town close to I-90, with a nice selection of kid- and family-friendly restaurants and the mall. All the rooms are air-conditioned and very clean, and there is an exercise room, game room, great indoor pool in the center atrium of the hotel, and of course, a gift shop and nice restaurant/cafe/bar that serves a free continental breakfast and happy hour at night. People were friendly, and all in all, we had a nice time!

Beneath the Black Hills lies a beautiful, silent underground wilderness. There are so many underground caves, caverns, gold mines, and other formations in the Black Hills, it's hard to decide which are worth the mooolah. Well if you are into the underground natural wonder or the gold boom mining thing, then the black hills are for you!

First there is Big Thunder Gold Mine. You can experience the Gold Rush of the 1800s here. This was a real gold mine and boasts one of the biggest displays of original mine equipment anywhere. The tour guides are well-informed, and they tell you all about the history, geology, and answer most questions. There is also a nice museum and, of course, a gift shop. You can also try your hand at panning for gold or take lessons.

Between the Beautiful Rushmore Cave and Black Hills Caverns, both close to Keystone, the caverns offers more for your money. There are three levels composed of stalagmites, helecites, and all other cites! The ½ hour tour is fun and informative. Again, there is a cute and unique gift and rock shop. Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns and Stage Barn Crystal Cave are both great examples of the underground beauty the Black Hills have to offer. My favorite so-called "underground" attraction was the Thunderhead Underground Falls. Inside the oldest Gold Mine near Rapid City, 600 feet inside the mountain in the Black Hills, is a magnificent vertical waterfall. I would definitely suggest at least looking into one of these magnificent tours. The caves and formations really are quite beautiful.

In plain view from the baseball stadium where we spent a lot of our time in Rapid City was a giant dinosaur atop a mountain. With a short drive straight up you will fin yourself ontop of this mountain looking down on the city. There are seven life-size concrete replicas of dinosaurs placed in a park-like setting. The brontosaurus is 80 foot long and 28 foot high and can be seen from most places in the city. The exhibits are lighted until 10:00pm. Built in the early 1930s.

The park was built as a WPA project(Works Project Administration) in 1936 by paleontologist C.C. O’Hara. O'Hara, a retired professor, was a dinosaur enthusiast, and had even helped in uncovering many dino digs in the Badlands. He saw Rapid City taking shape as a tourist town, and wanted to help bring some more light (along with Mount Rushmore) to Rapid City. So he went to work on the concrete monsters (that actually are quite unimposing and friendly looking). This is a fun and free adventure complete with gift shop in this prehistoric park!

Storybook Island is a fairyland park with nursery-rhyme displays, live animals, and a special playground that make you feel like you stepped right into a book. Being one of Rapid City's most popular attractions this is a must see, especially if you have kids, or if you are young at heart! It has such an adorable and innovative concept, and the grounds are very intricately designed. They also keep it very well maintained! The park opens at 9am and is open until 7pm. It is only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day during the summer! You can usually catch a production at the McDonalds Story Book Iland Theater, which puts on cute productions and educational experiences. Character greetings are ubiquitous here. Again, there is a themed gift shop at the end of your adventure.

Bear Country is a premier drive-through wildlife park. There are around 25 different species of native North American wildlife that (mostly) freely roam a 200-acre preserve. They do have to keep the wolves away from the elk and deer and the grizzly bears away from human automobiles! It is about a 3-mile drive, and you are guaranteed to see mountain lions, elk, reindeer, wolves, buffalo, and black bears. At the end of the drive is a short walk around babyland, which hosts zoo-like exhibits with fuzzy, cuddly baby bears, wolves, and otters you can ooooh and ahh your heart away at!

There is also a very nice gift shop to purchase everything you can dream up with a bear or wolf on it. To top it off, there is an overpriced burger stand that sells buffalo burgers--yeah, buffalo. All in all, this is actually a pretty wild adventure, and you can get some nice, up-close photos of bears. And the babies are adorable. The price is a little steep, and I just have to wonder about the animals' well-being. The habitat just doesn’t seem that advanced or large enough for all the animals there. This is a one-time thing!

Reptile Gardens is one of the Top 10 Places in the United States to "Stop the Car and Take a Look." It has the World's Largest Reptile Collection. There are also rare and beautiful minerals, fossils, plants, and sculptures. On "Death Row", you can see more of the world's deadliest snakes than can be seen anywhere else on earth. There are two large male Komodo Dragons and the second largest crocodile in captivity, Maniac. And let me tell you, the thing is HUGE. The large dome in the middle of the park is a "walk-through" jungle filled with lizards, crocodiles, harmless snakes, parrots, and hundreds of stunning orchids and tropical plants. There are also a ton of exhibits that are homes to snakes, lizards, and other reptiles.

Outside the dome are numerous shows, including the alligator and crocodile show, where brave lads wrestle alligators, the birds of prey show, the snake show, and Bewitched Village. There is a large prairie dog show, and I guess that if you reside somewhere other than the Plains states, it is a cute exhibit. For me, a resident of Colorado, where you can’t drive anywhere in the city and not see a million prairie dogs, the exhibit is kind of a joke.

The best exhibit and my personal favorite is the Giant Tortoises. You walk along a path through a grassy pasture where the tortoises are munching on grass, soaking in the mud, or moving v e r y s l o w l y. Some of the tortoises are over 120 years old and are from the Galapagos Islands. The experts there are very friendly and knowledgeable about these beautiful and ancient creatures. We spent almost 45 minutes with the tortoises.

The grounds at Reptile Gardens are beautiful. There are forty acres of landscaped grounds planted annually with over 50,000 flowering plants. There is also a "Jungle Outpost" where you can find authentic tribal art and T-shirts that say "Go wrestle a croc"--no joke. I enjoyed this attraction a lot, but I am petrified of snakes and had kind of a hard time on the walk-through in the dome. There are hundreds of snakes here--keep that in mind!

With a great small-town feel, Main Street is an awesome place just to relax and walk. It’s not such a great place to go shopping, unless you are looking for a hideous wedding dress. This is the historic downtown district. Highlights include the 1914 First National Bank building at 7th and Main, and across the street is the 1911 Lions Head Fountain, which was once a watering station for horses. The fire station, now a restaurant, is also quite a sight. There is also a great Native-American store on the north side of Main that has a ton of art, collectibles, and Native-American-created artifacts. Other than that, and a few nice restaurants and bars and one sweet hotel, there is not much there in the form of shops. (Oh, and everything closes super early, like 5pm, so keep that in mind.)

Yet, there is still a great reason to take a stroll down Main. At each cross street corner, there is a bronze statue of an important US President. Washington, Adams, Jefferson: they are all there. Among the most dramatic are Ford and Kennedy (my personal favorite). There is a small tourist center at the far west side of Main that has a walking tour map of Main and gives info on all of the presidents!! A great atmosphere and a real tribute to our nation’s presidents make this a very nice stroll!