The trip winds down
After the worst breakfast of the trip, the eggs were that bad I couldn't get close to finishing them, we pootled a short way down the road to Mt Rushmore which is a unique, impressive and literally monumental ... well, monument. We only had a short while to spend there as we had to get to the airport, but it was cold and apart from looking around the small museum and meeting one of the original workers and of course visiting the gift shop there wasn't a huge amount to do. I was disappointed that the nature trail was closed but we did see a couple of the big fluffy goats on the way out; the pictures are on Helen's camera.
All that was left of the trip was filling up the petrol tank, taking the car through the car wash and checking in at the airport. One thing I found out to my cost going through security in Rapid City is that snow globes are weapons of terror and not allowed in cabin baggage even if you put them in a plastic bag to be screened separately, sorry Lawrie that was your Christmas present!
Sitting in the departure lounge we were submitted to almost unrelenting news coverage of the boy in the balloon aftermath; oddly enough the news item on the official who refused to marry a mixed race couple was only given five minutes. Helen and I will certainly not miss the often trivial and nearly always speculative journalism on American TV and is looking forward to some good old BBC investigative journalism; I'm also looking forward to decent documentaries that don't over-dramatise, even most original BBC programmes are americanised.
Helen, who was flying on to Portland for the GSA a while later, saw Sylvie and I off as we flew back to what turned out to be a wet and cold Virginia.
Saturday morning was nice and relaxed and the only urgent task was to go shopping for veggies and milk for us and peanuts for the sqrls. Then in the late afternoon I drove Sylvie around the idiot hell that is the beltway, even worse in the wet, to Dulles airport to catch her flight home.
All that was left of the trip was filling up the petrol tank, taking the car through the car wash and checking in at the airport. One thing I found out to my cost going through security in Rapid City is that snow globes are weapons of terror and not allowed in cabin baggage even if you put them in a plastic bag to be screened separately, sorry Lawrie that was your Christmas present!
Sitting in the departure lounge we were submitted to almost unrelenting news coverage of the boy in the balloon aftermath; oddly enough the news item on the official who refused to marry a mixed race couple was only given five minutes. Helen and I will certainly not miss the often trivial and nearly always speculative journalism on American TV and is looking forward to some good old BBC investigative journalism; I'm also looking forward to decent documentaries that don't over-dramatise, even most original BBC programmes are americanised.
Helen, who was flying on to Portland for the GSA a while later, saw Sylvie and I off as we flew back to what turned out to be a wet and cold Virginia.
Saturday morning was nice and relaxed and the only urgent task was to go shopping for veggies and milk for us and peanuts for the sqrls. Then in the late afternoon I drove Sylvie around the idiot hell that is the beltway, even worse in the wet, to Dulles airport to catch her flight home.
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