Experience the best of Rapid City

Rapid City sits where the Black Hills meet the Great Plains in western South Dakota, on the banks of Rapid Creek. Life-size bronze statues of American presidents stand on the street corners of the downtown, and Dinosaur Park, a hilltop with concrete dinosaurs built in the 1930s, looks over the city. The Black Hills, called Paha Sapa by the Lakota, are sacred to them and rise as dark, pine-covered uplands.

Mount Rushmore, with its four presidential faces carved in granite, lies about 40 km south-west, and the Crazy Horse Memorial, a vast mountain carving in progress, is a little farther. Custer State Park has herds of bison and the winding Needles Highway. To the east, the Badlands are a landscape of eroded pinnacles and prairie, and to the north-west the gold-rush town of Deadwood and Spearfish Canyon are within a drive.

Bison burgers, chislic, cubes of grilled meat on skewers that are a South Dakota favourite, and kuchen, a German-Russian custard dessert, are on local menus, along with fry bread and Indian tacos. Summers are warm with thunderstorms, winters are cold and snowy, and aspens colour the hills in autumn.