Chris Brown is the Lanky Git

Day 3

Chadron, South Dakota

I woke up early again… 5:30am today. It’s ok though, I can attribute that to the group of bikers that started up their Harley Davidson’s right outside my motel room window, however the sun was shining and I knew we had a sightseeing day planned, due to the lack of storms that day. First thing to do was to get myself breakfast before meeting with the others at 9:30am.

As mentioned, today was a ‘non-chase day’, so order of the day was sightseeing! Despite having come to chase storms for only six days, I was quite excited about doing some sightseeing. After all it would be a shame to come all this way and at not see anything other than paved roads and fields of grass and cattle. As our target area for the next day (Day 4) was Eastern Montana we were going to be heading north through the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is the home of the Wind Cave National Park and more famously, Mount Rushmore.

The Wind Cave National Park was the first stop of that day and it turned out to be one of the most memorable, non-storm, parts of the trip too. The caves themselves have an interesting history and are well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. Our tour guide – bless his heart – was a nice young lad, who it appeared, was still training to be a ‘Cave Ranger’. The talk he gave during the tour was very informative although his philosophical tone was the cause of a few sniggers during the hour we spent inside the caves. His opening line of “Imagine you are a 16 year old boy…” was one that stuck with us for the rest of the week.

Next stop on our whirl wind tour (yes, that’s a joke) of the Black Mountains was Mount Rushmore. The mount has the faces of four former American presidents carved into it. The faces, which are each over 60 feet in height, represent the first 150 years in the history of the United States. As with every stop we were asked to meet back at the SUV at an allotted time, in this case, 45 minutes later. Whilst waiting for the others to return,  I enjoyed watching a storm pass through the valley below. Watching it shed its load of rain and discharge its lightning was quite surreal as I was stood in the blazing sunshine hoping I wasn’t getting burnt, no more than a couple of miles away from the downpour.

Our home for the night was the town of Keystone, South Dakota, which was only a few miles from Mount Rushmore.  However before checking into our motel for the night Todd had one more stop planned. As we passed through Keystone, the ever knowledgeable Todd pointed out suitable drinking holes that would require a visit that evening. Last stop of the day was the Big Bear Country USA wildlife park. If you had ever been to Windsor Safari Park then you know what to expect here.  It was a drive through Wildlife Park. The main attraction of the park was obviously the Bears, however there was much more to see as you drove though.  Elks, Reindeer, White Wolves, Mountain Goats, Leopards and Bison were all roaming free. At the end of the drive through, there was a kind of mini zoo where the main attraction was the baby bears. The bears are kept here until they are big enough to fend for themselves in the main enclosure.

Back to Keystone and Todd had one more thing planned for us – this guy never stops – right next to our motel, the Super 8 in Keystone was the Presidents Alpine Slide. Another attraction I actually remember being at the Windsor Safari Park before it was turned into Legoland. The Alpine Slide is a toboggan ride where you can control the speed of your sledge as you ride 2km down the side of a mountain, more info on their website. We rode to the top of the hill on a chairlift, and after a beer at the top it was time for speedy ride back to the bottom!

What a day, and there was still one more thing left to do… hit the bar for a well earned beer or five…

Storm Chasing