Saturday--the forgotten day

I just realized that I didn't tell you what we did on Saturday...

Elizabeth, Race and I started with breakfast at Perkins (apparently a midwest chain) and then headed to the South Dakota Air & Space Museum. While it doesn't even compare to the Hill AFB Museum Race and I visited on the way out, but they did have some really unique displays. The first thing that caught our eye's was a missile, a big missile. It was a Minuteman ICBM left over from Ellsworth AFB's missile silo days. We didn't get to tour the Missile Silo at Minuteman National Park because we got there too late on Thursday, but we got to se a Minuteman missile. Inside, another big surprise, a complete Minuteman control station that had been used as a simulator. It gives me the chills to see the Launch keys inserted into their switches waiting to be turned.

We then headed for Devils Tower National Monument (cue Close Encounters of the Third Kind music), this was a 113 mile drive but, what the hey, we wanted to see it. On the way we visited the town of Aladdin and bought drinks and Buffalo Jerky at a 115 year old General Store. We also visited a Coal Tipple; this is the large chute coming down from a mine that screens coal out by size and loads wagons. The highlight of the day turned out to be in the 2-horse town of Hulett where we had a pizza at Charles T's. Charles turns out to be a Long Island New York transplant who is building his second homebuilt aircraft. He became our best bud when Elizabeth told him we were on our way home from Oshkosh. He hadn't attended this year but has in the past. Both the the pizza and the conversation were excellent. The funny thing, and I think I forgot to mention this, is that we met another homebuilder who wasn't going to Oshkosh this year in Madison County Iowa. He was running the gift shop at one of the bridges of Madison County (Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood were in the movie The Bridges of Madison County). It's a small world.

Devil's Tower was cool, but lets face it, it's just a big rock pillar. We got a bunch of pictures but the frequent and violent thunderstorms we had been experiencing all afternoon convinced us not to take the mile + hike around the base.

We stopped off in Belle Fourche (bell foosh) and took pictures at the geographic center of the United States. Now we've been to the southernmost point of the US and the center of the US. Cool.

Oh well, back to Rapid City. -Dean