Tuesday, June 17, 2008

South Dakota Part 1

We just got back from our family vacation to the Black Hills in South Dakota. What a blast! We had so many adventures. It was, in my opinion, our best vacation! Can you tell I had fun? *grins* 

We left Wisconsin in the midst of a series of storms and tornados, but once we got into Minnesota the weather was fine for us. Though more than once I worried about what was going on at home. We drove straight thru the night and got to the "World Famous" Wall Drug just in time to have breakfast.


Pretty good way to start the day...good coffee and 5 cents!

Wall Drug is huge and we didn't really look around much. I was anxious to get going to the Badlands. I've wanted to go for a long time. It was better than I thought. We first followed a gravel road instead of the main scenic route. We gawked at the cute prairie dogs and even saw burrowing owls! We decided to climb down a gentle slope and hike around. I never realized just how many cacti grow there. We saw "evidence" of bison, but none of the big guys.  

After hiking around for a while, we got back in the van and followed the Badlands loop to all the lookouts. Wow hours and hours of beautiful vistas. But is also seems a bit sad and desolate to me. I'm facinated by the geology of the area. I'm inspired to find out more.


We then continued on to Mount Rushmore. The kids have been wanting to go since they saw "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" last year. Very cool. We followed the trail around, but we didn't see any mountain goats. :-(

It was an exhausting day after getting very little sleep the night before. We drove on to Custer, ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, and stayed in the Super 8. It was reasonably priced, quiet, clean, and had a good breakfast. Now I'm a travel agent :-)

More later.....BTW no flooding problems byt my house Whew! but my poor home state has been beat up enough already!



1 comment:

Julie said...

Hi Xanthe,
We have been there too and enjoyed every thing we saw. Wall Drug is great! See you soon!
Julie