South Dakota pt 2: Sylvan Lake & Hill City

After Mount Rushmore we called a huddle and decided to venture on to Hill City (a tourist mousetrap) for an afternoon meal at the busiest diner in town - this quaint lil joint that only took cash and no BS. The key lime cheesecake dessert is a thumbs up for all you sweet-heads out there (although the key lime cheesecake desert sounds more appealing - like that one Microsoft screensaver but green and minty fresh.) I had a chicken salad but lamely it was spinach leaves instead of iceberg - they really need to warn you about that ahead of time like the iPhone weather app but there are lettuce leaves falling instead of raindrops. Alas, the diner was a good find, the hot spot in a hot town (but not as cool as the one I went to with my Mom & Dad in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho that the one and only Guy Fieri made the trek to - I’ll slap that photo below as well.) 

After eating most of Grandma’s potato salad (which was actually very tasty), we made the windy drive to Sylvan Lake (which charges $20 to enter - what a racket! Don’t think I’ve ever paid to go hop in a lake - but they know about those National Treasure diehards.) That’s right, this is the very same lake that was featured in the sequel of National Treasure, the Nic Cage dynamo caper in which he plays a golden nugget seeking lunatic. My Aunt Joc said when Cage came to town, he was a real jerk to the local waitresses - guess word spreads like wildfire around the Black Hills about how the big name Hollywood hotshots conduct themselves - like a Yelp review via saloon. Also, there was a cool single-lane tunnel (the first photo) that we drove through on the way up and down - people enjoy honking their horns when they enter the tunnel to alert any oncoming traffic or nearby mountain goats. 

Alas, this was a very enjoyable morning (Mount Rushmore) and afternoon (the Hill City diner and Sylvan Lake experience) and the best part is this day was not even over. I love how when you are home on a lazy Sunday you will just sit around and watch football, go for a lil walk, sit by the pool, read a few pages of your book, maybe hit the grocery store but then when you’re on vacation you’ll turn into Sightseeing Superman, packing 3 weeks of activity into 3 days, Rick Steves’s assistant coach. I do enjoy the way vacations seem to simultaneously speed up and slow down town - it goes by in a blur but you will remember it forever - good times all around.