The following morning, we checked out Delta-9, a Cold War Era Nuclear Missile Silo. When these silos were decommissioned as part of an arms agreement with Russia, they imploded most of them but kept a few for people to view. While we couldn’t go into this one, we got the opportunity to go into another decommissioned silo at Ellsworth AFB when we took a tour of the base.
We also got to see a lot of really cool decommissioned planes at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, located adjacent to the AFB. Coolest among these were the B-1B bomber, used for carrying nuclear warheads, General Eisenhower’s WW2 plane, and Apollo astronaut Gus Grissom’s fighter jet.
We wrapped up the day by checking out downtown Rapid City. We got some more ice cream, headed to a board game shop, and picked up Twilight Struggle, which, despite the name, has nothing to do with vampires. We checked into a motel that night for another much needed shower and some decent R&R. We got halfway through our first game of Twilight Struggle that night before it was lights out for both of us.