Monday, 8th September - Cheyenne to Rapid City (330 miles)

Long journey today travelling north out of Wyoming into South Dakota via a major US historical site, Fort Laramie:

Where to start? The site was much larger and better preserved/restored than we had anticipated so we spent considerably more time exploring than we had planned.

We also stopped to view the old bridge over the River Laramie:

The wagon ruts still visible on the adjacent Oregon Trail:

And the Register Cliff that has inscriptions put there by the original pioneers as they passed by (also, sadly, lots of modern graffiti):

We drove out of the relatively flat prairie lands of Wyoming and into South Dakota via the infamous Black Hills ("given" to the native American Indians by treaty and then grabbed back once gold was discovered!).

We arrived at our hotel just after dark to discover that they thought our reservation had been cancelled! Fortunately a couple of spare rooms were available - there was, on this occasion, room at the inn .........

Comments

  1. Miss GillianSeptember 10, 2025 at 7:35 AM

    Oh no! Shades of the Bois de Chenes in Lafayette, when they didn't think we were coming to stay. Glad they had a couple of spare rooms, although that car looks big enough to sleep four! All those places look very interesting, especially the Register Wall which again reminds me of our last Route 66 trip and the wall covered in 18thC graffiti.

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  2. Steve CorbettSeptember 23, 2025 at 5:17 AM

    When I was a young lad my father made me a fort called Fort Laramie. So I was quite thrilled that we could visit the Fort en route.
    My fort was not too far different from the original, but the Fort was much larger than we thought and the buildings and artifacts were thoughtfully restored.
    We would go on in our journey to encounter references to the Treaties of Fort Laramie (1851 and 1868) and understand their significance towards the treatment to the Native Americans, and the impact that the settlers, especially in times of the gold rush, would make.
    We also wondered about the bravery of the settlers going on these trails with no real knowledge of the dangers that they would face.

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