When we were planning this trip we had decided that there were places that we didn’t need to go to because we have been there before. Sometimes more than once. Mount Rushmore and the Badlands were in that category.

But without those two big stops, there wasn’t much to see. We drove through the whole state north to south. We saw lots of prairies which were pretty scenery, but not a lot to take pictures of.

We spent the night in the state capital, Pierre. It is the second smallest state capital by population. We were easily able to get pictures of the capitol!

As I was driving in the afternoon, Larry googled restaurants in Pierre to get dinner ideas. There was a highly rated, reasonably priced steakhouse with sawdust on the floor. It sounded perfect! According to reviews “it’s worth the wait”, so being a Saturday night, and having had a light lunch, we thought we’d head over there around 5:00 when they opened.

The timing was good, we got to the hotel, checked in, and hauled all of our stuff to our room. It was 4:40 and it was only going to take about 10 minutes to get there, but we thought we might as well head over there, we can wait in the car or whatever until they open. Picturing being the only people there right at 5:00 seemed mildly embarrassing but really, who cares?

When we arrived at the restaurant the car before us and after us both turned in to the parking lot, which was quickly filling up. And there was a line snaking into the parking lot of people waiting for the doors to open! We quickly joined the line laughing to ourselves about thinking we were early!

They were clearly used to this rush and quickly and efficiently seated everyone and took food orders. The food was delicious, the service was good, and it was a fun experience.