So, an interesting ting happens when you come back to the Badlands and the Black Hills for the third time: they start to feel familiar. Since yesterday was Independence Day I spent some time thinking about being an American and so it was a nice feeling to be familiar with more than just my little corner of the country. So often people get caught up in trying to separate themselves by region, ethnicity, or even by urban/rural. What a shame, because when we do that, we are weakening what makes our country so great - the fact that we can all pull together not despite those differences but because of them.
So, enough reflecting, let's get to the details!
I'm writing this post on the morning of July 5th in my tent. I probably should get out and help Mike with the munchkins but if I do that, who knows if I'll get a chance to blog about yesterday. It's so nice to have an extra couple of hands around to help out with everything. With Mike being an extra driver, Tom can help me do stuff while we are on the road (like put away the beds or get breakfast ready). With my Mom here, she can take the kids to the playground as soon as we get to the campsite so I can set up the tent and Tom and Mike can level out the motorhome. And of course, the kids mostly love just being able to spend time with Nana and Papa and it's so lucky for me because I get to spend more time with the kids because there are extra hands to do everything else.
Yesterday was a long, busy day. Our lack of sleep the night before made it (I hope) one of our toughest days. After our Missouri River stop we went on the Black Hills. There's not much to see in South Dakota and I found myself saying that this is definitely NOT a state that I would live in. Even though the scenery changes when you get to the Black Hills, sorry to say to the South Dakota lovers that this state did not make my list of potential residences. The one thing that I thought was neat about the grassland was the color. I love the color of the prairie grass, it's that lighter green color (come on, no Crayola jokes, just trying to get the point across so I'm not going to get in to the corresponding crayon box colors) but with the darker green always peaking through underneath as the wind blows in waves across the rolling land. At least there are rolls to the land up here (but they are drawn out and longer than we are used to in MIchigan). I'm sure you'll see my extreme disdain for flat flat flat flat land with nothing to see later in the trip (unless I'm fortunate enough to sleep through all of Nebraska, then never mind, I'm sure it's a great state.) There I go, ignoring my own advice of coming together as a country. I'm going to find something nice to say about Nebraska when we get there at the end of the trip.
After our grassland drive we finally were able to catch sight of the Badlands in the distance. From I-90 the first view you see are white buttes sitting above the grassland in the distance. I won't say rising because it's not like they project out of the ground, it's more like they are just at a higher level than the surrounding land. We stopped at a couple of trails before getting to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center. The first stop was the Big Badlands Overlook just inside the park. Pretty darn neat to see the "canyon" as Sophie likes to call it. Also got my first preview of just how nerve-demolishing this trip is going to be since all Max wanted to do was "go down there". Love the explorer spirit in him...will feel better when he's past the age where he trips over blades of grass. The white/buff/brown/maroon tinged soil is layered here so it's appealing to the eye to just look out see that variety. At the bottom, the grass still has a hold and will spread into the fingers of the canyons and around the single buttes. After very-little and much hand-holding exploring (and some rock throwing by Sophie), we were back in the RV for a little drive down the road to the Window Notch Castle trail. I should mention that Sophie has her binoculars for this trip and it's super cute the way she has to stop all the time to look through them. I should probably check at some point to see if they are even focused in. If I say to her, "did you see that bird?" her response is "I got it with my binoculars" like she was taking a picture or something. Cute stuff. So anyway, Window Trail was just a short little walk up to where two buttes frame a view of the Badlands. Sophie was content with that little bit (probably because she had already slipped on the loose rocks underfoot and fell once) but Mr. Max was upset because he wanted to go "up the castle" and climb the little trail further of the butte. Those two will make a good pair when they play together - Max will push Sophie to try things she may not otherwise do...and Sophie will stop Maxton from doing things that he definitely should not do. Good to have a voice of caution and a voice and daring.
By the time we reached the visitor center the temperature was already soaring so the air conditioning was a nice respite. They have a fossil room where they are working to remove rocks from around fossils discovered in the park. Pretty neat, though Sophie keeps asking "what's that" to all the fossils and none seemed to have common names so I had to spend the visit trying to pronounce some very cumbersome scientific names; I'm good with Latin for a little while now. They have a little coloring station in there so Max and Sophie both colored some extinct creature (not sure, didn't even look at its name) and I prompted Sophie through the Junior Ranger book. I really do like the Junior Ranger program so far - it's neat that it does give you age-appropriate ideas and topics to talk to the kids about. So after some Lakota language lessons, some thoughts about what animal she thinks should live in grasslands, and some other work, Sophie was ready to turn in her book and take the Junior Ranger pledge. I guess nerves got the best of her because it sounds like Mom, Mike, and Tom had to take the pledge with her because she was too scared. After that, she gets a badge making her an official Badlands Junior Ranger.
Our drive out of the Badlands was pretty - the white tips of the buttes (by the way, learned the butte, not mountain thing at the Junior Ranger station with Sophie, I've forgotten most of the geology of out here) stood in stark contrast of the ever darkening sky. Also got to see some nice lightning strikes. Looked very "nature-like". The ride up toward Wall on the Badlands Scenic Overlook road also takes you through some different colors in the formations...yellows and red that are much deeper in color. Again, see comment about not remembering geology.
By the time we got to Wall, we were all hot and hungry but the first restaurant we stopped at was not looking promising. As we were sitting there, a manager was trying to tell the waitress who had been waiting the longest and I looked around at the full tables and noticed that no one had food. I made the executive decision to stop our drink orders in the middle of her writing (sorry waitress, nothing personal, just needed to get food in bellies) and headed across the street to the Wall Drug Cafe. After a little searching (and the kids getting scared by the T-Rex, we ordered our food and sat down to eat. Of course the day caught up to Maxton here and he fell asleep about half way through his fries. Tom took him back to the camper where they both took a little nap and the rest of us did a little shopping. Sophie really wanted a hat and we found one she likes (she mostly likes it because it's "pink and just like Papa's"). After a super-fast walk back to the camper (whew, made it!) we got in just before the big raindrops and hail hit. Next, we had to make the decision to head to our campsite directly (we were ahead of my conservatively-timed itinerary for Day 1) or head to Mt. Rushmore so that it would free up some time from the schedule tomorrow. The decision was made to continue to Rushmore.
Our drive to Mt. Rushmore took us through Keystone (which we had never actually went through the last time we were here) and we did have to wait in line to get in the parking lot. It was a neat stop, we did make the "hike" as the kids call it down to the Sculptor's Studio but did not do the Presidential Trail. The Studio is neat though because it does show the original plan for the mountain that includes more than just the heads but a waist-up carving. The bad thing about the Studio is that's where I got stung by a bee. Sorry again to the startled people that I brushed the bee off toward - didn't really know what was happening until it was over. Sophie was super proud about her discovery of a mountain goat (picture hanging on a banner) here because it was part of the Scavenger Hunt in her Junior Ranger packet. She wasn't going to do it at Rushmore but then changed her mind. The packet that they had was very age appropriate and she enjoyed completing it. Again, it does give a nice jumping off point to talk about the monument; she could look at the pictures on her paper and then find them up on the mountain and we could talk about what she was seeing. A nice end to our visit was a stop for ice cream before we hit the road. The path from Mt. Rushmore to our campsite at Game Lodge in Custer State Park was a winding one. We may have been better off taking the long trip around just to avoid the Black Hills. The drive would have been more pretty if I wasn't so worried about Tom falling off the side of the road. He did a great job driving - I'm thankful that he's comfortable with our rig because I know I would have been a nervous wreck trying to do that drive (and to add an extra level of difficulty there was construction that reduced a few bridges down to a VERY narrow one lane).
Oh, just went back and fixed something. Blogger for iPad doesn't really warn me about grammar/spelling errors and I don't feel like proofreading, so ignore the errors and enjoy the content.
Once we made it to the campsite, the set up seemed to go quite smoothly. The only bump in the road was that Mike and Tom and to put together the little grill that we brought along, but that should be good from here on out. We did get a chance to see a little wildlife outside the camp fence so that was a nice end to the evening. After some showers, it was time for bed and now here we are on to Day 3 of our trip already. Hard to believe!
