"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? "

I switched the title of today's post to a different awesome 80's movie in honor of our first stop today. South Dakota used to have over 300 Minuteman II missile silos. They were all decommissioned in the early 90's and one of them is now under National Park control. I was all bitter (shocker) today because the formal tours of the launch control center can only hold six people and there are only two tours a day. I called over two months ago and the tours were already full. We still got to see the actual silo (and missile), just not able to go down to where the two Missilemen sat and lived underground. We ran into one of the tour groups and in the brief time we saw them I found a reason in my head for why almost everyone in the group was not as entitled to be there as us, but whatever. They had a video at the headquarters that showed you what we would have seen, so we kind of saw it.


We went to the Badlands after that. This was the first place on our trip that I had already been to. Still cool though. I got burned a little today on the drive from the Badlands to our next stop, Mt. Rushmore.


This also was somewhere I was 13 years ago. It was completely different. There is an all new enterance, parking, museum and a cool trail that goes as close as you can get to the base of the mountain. Roosevelt had what looked like some weird tv antenna coming out of his head and there were people up on top.

No, not them.

They were getting Rushmore prepared for the 4th of July. We ended up going back after dinner to watch the lighting of the monument. Really poor music choice and the lights are on the worlds biggest dimmer. Kind of meh. Not awesome, not a waste of our time.

Tomorrow, super light day for sights, heavy on the driving. Aside from a possible detour back to Wall (more on that at the end...), it should be an easy drive. Take it Google Maps...

Day 5:
Keystone, SD to Cody, WY

Oh, that detour. Well, we can't find the charger for the very computer I am now typing on. You see the dilemma. It's either at our hotel in Wall (we can't find out if they have it until 8am) or lost forever. So, if there is now update tomorrow, it either will be until Sunday or if Dell can send another replacement to Sun Valley by Thurs. or Fri.. Awesome. I don't know how it got left, that's the most frustrating part. But, if this is the "worst" thing to happen on the trip, then I'll take it. Oh, I can't say enough how frustrated I am.

Highlight of the day: Approaching Mt. Rushmore with the Hermann's theme from North By Northwest). I don't care what you say, it was cool.