Happy Labor Day! This year we found ourselves road-tripping up to South Dakota, one of the 10 states I'd never been to (for those of you who are counting, which I'm pretty sure is approximately none of you... but of course since this is MY blog, I'm officially documenting the other 9-- Alaska, Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and North Dakota). And as of this weekend, I can now check South Dakota off my list! 41 out of 50 ain't too bad.....
Obviously the biggest draw to South Dakota is that it's the home of Mt. Rushmore, one of the seven US man-made wonders of the world. Even the kids had heard of Mt. Rushmore-- so we were all pretty excited to say "we'd been there and done that."
And here it is, in all of its glory! It really is quite beautiful! Admittedly smaller than I thought it would be, but no less impressive. You could actually see it on the mountainside as you drive up to the memorial, before you even pay to get closer, and it was so cool to see something we've only see in pictures all of sudden appear in real life.
It was a gorgeous blue-skied day in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and we were thankful for that!
Our happy (if not slightly sleep deprived) family of 6! I just know even Lizzie was awed and inspired at such an early age by her exposure to something so historical and fascinating.
There is about a 1 mile trail around the monument to showcase various views and different angles, and that's really about it. A small little visitor's center to explain how it was made, etc., but it was pretty straightforward and with 4 kids I liked that.
We learned that the original design was to include the busts of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, but due to the sudden arrival of WWII there was no more funding left to complete it, so technically it's unfinished. Also, a bill had been passed in Congress to add Susan B. Anthony, but that too was thrown out once money became scarce during the war.
Selfie time! I think we look just like our own Mt. Rushmore, don't you?
A small peek at the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota!
There are TONS of toursit-y places to see and things to do. Bear Country USA had been recommended by several people, so although Jon was really hoping to tour the "Dances With Wolves" film set, me and the kids won out. ((Next time, John-O.)) You get to drive through the park and see lots of native animals to the area up close and personal-- starting with this herd of elk. We even got to hear them bugling to each other which is really pretty interesting!
This wolf was hanging out right in the middle of where all the cars were driving. I guess with thousands of visitors each year they're pretty desensitized to traffic.
Nice big herd of big horn sheep, which incidentally Jon says is one of the few species of wildlife he's never actually run into in the wild... That and wolves, and grizzlies, and I'd like to keep it that way!
There were TONS of bears! They were everywhere all over the park! Only black bears, but they come in all different colors and sizes so that was pretty fun to see them eating and sleeping and playing with each other. This guy had just crawled out of a bath.
Pretty cool to get to see some of these animals so close-up! There was an area at the end with all the baby animals you could go check out, and the kids loved seeing the baby bear cubs. They were adorable!
Zach found this hat in the gift shop area and thought it might be a pretty cool homage to the Lone Wolf we know and love.
After Bear Country we headed back to Keystone for lunch (home of Carrie Ingalls for you Little House fans--- Laura lived a few hours away in De Smet). It was a really cute "Old West" town with tons of gift shops and fun little restaurants. We got some really yummy sandwiches as "Teddy's Deli," named after Teddy Roosevelt himself.
The party continued with a quick stop at an alpine slide just up the road. There was an alpine slide in Jackson Hole that was literally my favorite thing ever when I was a kid, so being the nice mom that I am, I let Jon go with the three older kids since none of them had ever done one. Here they go up the mountain!
I thought Zach would totally love it and just bomb it down the slide since he's such a daredevil (normally), but I guess they made such a big deal about going too fast he was so paranoid he was going to fall out and he rode the brakes the whole way down... Oops. He had like 10 unhappy people all backlogged behind him, including Lucy.
She was not very happy with him! Ha ha.
At least Jon and Leah had a clear runway ahead of them and as you can see from her face, she LOVED it! They actually went really fast too! I could hear her yelling "Whee! Whee!" the whole way down.
We stayed at a really nice La Quinta in Rapid City that had an indoor water park attached called Wa Tiki. It was pretty fancy! Since we were hotel guests we got discounted tickets and we spent the rest of our Saturday playing there.
Lucy and Zach did all of the slides pretty much continuously and Lucy said it was even better than Great Wolf Lodge. It wasn't super busy so the lines weren't too bad at all and they spent hours swimming, eating pizza for dinner, and swimming some more.
Leah liked the splash pad and lazy river, but mostly she like stealing our free drinks (we got vouchers when we checked in)-- and their virgin pina coladas were pretty darn good! Reminded me a bit of being on a cruise, in fact. The kids finally finished swimming around 7 p.m., came back to the room and showered, and were sound asleep by 7:30. They were totally worn out! That meant Jon could stay up and watch the BYU game on the hotel's cable-- a rare treat for this guy.
Sunday morning we checked out Story Book Island, which is a free park in downtown Rapid City that features play equipment and kid-friendly displays all featuring characters and scenes from story books. It was awesome, and hands-down Leah's favorite thing we did!
It also happened to be 1/2 a mile away from the church building where we planned on catching the 11 a.m. sacrament meeting. Perfect!
Snow White's play cottage
Wizard of Oz story land
Leah's fancy unicorn!
Cinderella's carriage you could climb on and ride in!
Winnie the Pooh had an awesome tree house you could climb in and play on with Christopher Robin and Eeyore up at the top (Zach was embarrassed by this one, obviously).
Leah was so thrilled to find Ariel! The park was HUGE and we barely made it around the whole thing to check out all the different story books by the time we had to leave to go to church. We attended the Black Hills ward which was really more like a branch. I thought we'd get there right at 11, and then just sneak in back in the overflow unnoticed, but with literally less than 25 people that was totally not going to happen! In fact, after the opening song before they passed the sacrament, the 2nd counselor announced to the ward that they had 5 minutes to get up and come meet the "new people/visitors" (hello, that was just US!!!) which was kind of awkward and unusual-- but that's the way it's done when you get visitors in South Dakota I guess!
Last but not least we wanted to visit Custer State Park in the Black Hills before we headed back home. I've heard it's just beautiful country, full of wildlife (including lots of buffalo!), and home to the Sioux Indians. It was a lovely drive!
We ran into some burros on our way around the wildlife loop. They are awfully friendly and come right up to your window looking for food.
I really wanted to be naughty and let the kids feed him some goldfish crackers or something, but since Lucy is a Junior Park Ranger, I figured we'd better follow the rules. I did let them reach out the window and pet him though!
We found a little lodge to stop in and have lunch at, and since they claimed to be famous for their bison burgers-- Lucy, me, and Jon did indeed eat the buffalo and we liked it! Hey, when in South Dakota...
After tanking up on bison and apple crisp (it tasted and felt just like fall) we finished our scenic little drive and headed for home. I was really surprised by how lovely South Dakota is! It is definitely bleak in parts, and so incredibly isolated (you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere pretty much the whole drive), but the prairie grasses and rolling hills were just beautiful. And we saw TONS of antelope on the drive home. I'm so thankful for these chances to see so many places in this beautiful country of ours-- as this just felt like one more stop on our "America the Beautiful" road trip. I also loved being able to check another item or two off our bucket list, as well as officially bid summer goodbye! And now I think we're ready for fall....
