Our first stop this afternoon, rather excitedly, was at Mount Rushmore. I had, naturally, been rather looking forward to this for some time as it's one of those things that people think of as soon as you mention the United States - along with the Statue of Liberty and Apple Pie. In the end, it was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest, but then most things are after you've seen them in close up on television and depicted on postcards everywhere you look across ...

My tour today began at 8.30 with a drive out of the sprawling metropolis of Rapid City and through countryside which changed rapidly from suburban streets to fields of multicoloured crops. All the way to our first stop at the Badlands National Park, our guide wouldn't stop going on about what a great time we were going to have - in fact, I don't think she stopped talking from the second the last passengers joined us on the coach. We got to know every detail about...

Today, I've been on the road for most of the day - in fact, it's probably been one of the longest drives I'm likely to have for the rest of the trip, so I guess it's lucky that my only stop of the day was at somewhere as historically significant as the tiny wild west town of Deadwood, South Dakota. It was here, on the 2nd of August 1876, that James Butler Hickock - better known as Wild Bill - famously cashed in his chips. A sometime lawman and notorious gunsling...