Mt. Rushmore & the Black Hills Trip

We live in Atlanta so we flew into Denver and rented a car for a couple of reasons:  first there are no big airports around the Black Hills, including Rapid City, so you have to go to a large city airport anyway and then change planes to continue on to a nearby city and that's just not for us.  But the bigger reason is that we go on these trips to see the USA, the lay of the land, the country and countryside and the landscape.  For us, that's part of the fun and we just love seeing our beautiful country and enjoy what it has to offer.     So we hit the road (we have already done a Denver & Rocky Mountain trip before) and headed to South Dakota by way of Nebraska--on purpose--because we have never been in the state of Nebraska and wanted to see it, as noted above. 

 It was a lot diffenert than I expected, based on what I had heard and was pleasantly surprised at the scenery.  One thing that we noticed was that there were a ton of trains all along the route,......and ....not......much........else! 

We passed this sign, 'Lost Springs-population one', and that about sums it up.  But I did hit the brakes, back up and take the picture because it was too good to pass up. 

Then we followed a rainbow into South Dakota at dusk and arrived in Hot Springs to spend the night and see what it had to offer, with hopes of relaxing in a real hot spring under the evening sky.  After checking into the hotel we had dinner at a nice restaurant called Scotty's across the street and got directions to a little park with what was supposed to be a hot spring.  It may have been fed by a hot spring somewhere upstream, but the water was ice cold where we were and we couldn't go in.  We wanted to be outdoors in the cool night air, but it looks like Evan's Plunge is the only game in town--and it's indoors.  We had fun anyway, and turned in for the night.