Memorial Day Weekend in South Dakota

I have been trying to convince Derek for years that we should make a trip to Mt. Rushmore mostly because I had a good college friend, Alissa, living in the area. Well, now that Alissa has moved Derek decided it was time to take our kids to Mt. Rushmore. The boys were recently watching National Treasure two with Derek and some of it is filmed in Mt. Rushmore so that was what roused excitement. We left quite late on Thursday (the last day of school) because Liv didn’t want to miss her undefeated softball team’s game. We got on the road at 7:30 pm and drove to Rawlings Wyoming arriving about midnight. Liv and Carter fell as sleep soon after dark, but Camden is always our hold out on driving trips and didn’t fall asleep until the last 30 minutes of the drive. 

 The next morning, we got up and drove the rest of the way to Mt. Rushmore. 

 We parked the car and wandered around the grounds, watched the video, and had some food at the café which had glass windows looking towards Mt. Rushmore. 

 Then we headed to our hotel in Rapid Ciy. We stayed at the Farifield Inn Marriot in Rapid City and told the kids that when we got to the hotel we had a surprise for them. Somewhere along the drive one of the kids asked if the hotel had a pool and we told them a small one. To their surprise, a whole waterpark was attached to the hotel. After checking in, we went to downtown Rapid City. Downtown Rapid City has statues of all the US Presidents, some got some ice cream and wondered around looking at all the statues. The next morning, we drove out to Badlands National Park. Along the way we saw a sign about every mile for Wall Drug advertising free ice water and so much more. We decided it deserved our stop. It was a whole little city square of souvenir shops. Our free ice water turned into more like $100 ice water by the time we got out of there, but we found some cool finds. Liv got a cute So Dak (South Dakota) sweatshirt which she used the whole trip, we bought some games, some hand towels for the camper, Derek got some books, and fresh fudge. The kids got a picture on a Jackolpe. 

 Badlands National Park was actually really pretty we did 3 short ¼-1/2 mile hikes. We saw mountain goats all over.

 Camden snapped this picture of Derek and I before we were ready and looking at the camera. Then, I remembered that it was our anniversary. So this picture commemorates our 17th anniversary. 

 Then, we took the kids back to the hotel and the swam at the water park for 3 hours at least. 

That evening we took them to a chuckwagon dinner on the film shoot site of Dances with Wolves. They learned how to make tin dinner plates and we bough one for each kid. 

 These have actually come in handy too serving as great snack holders in the car. The kids also learned how to make rope and helped make rope out of toilet paper. 

 We then tied them up with said rope and put them in jail. 

 The chuckwagon dinner was kind of fun. I bought each of the kids some Sioux City Sarsparilla.  They gave everyone dinner in a tin plate and then they had a band sing and play country songs, but also a ton of sing a long songs. They would tell jokes. The boys got a little bored, but I think particularly the sing a long portion was fun for all the kids.

 The next day, the kids swam for another hour or two and then we drove to Custer state park. We drove in up the Iron Mountain road which was so pretty. You would get views of Mt. Rushmore all through the drive. They had these gorgeous wood bridges you drove and wound over and so many one lane rodes and tunnels through the rocks of the Black Hills. 

 We had a picnic lunch at the Custer State visitor center. The visitor’s center was so nice. It had the nicest movie theater with the comfiest seats. We all really enjoyed the movie abut the park. We then drove the Wildlife loop and saw pronghorn deer, huge herds of buffalo, prairie dogs, and wild burrows. 

 Really beautiful and fun. Then, we drove up Needled highway to hike to the cathedral spires (which was quite steep).  At the top we had a little Sunday devotional. 

Then, we drove through the eye of the needle tunnel to Sylvan lake which was just so so pretty. 

 We ate dinner at Red Lobster with the kids for the first time. It was going well until maybe Camden’s stomach didn’t agree with his smoothie and he threw it all back up on the table and hallway. Felt terrible about that. Everyone was exhausted so back to the hotel one more time. All 3 of the kids shared a pull out couch. It was quite incredible how well they slept all snuggled together on that couch all weekend. The next morning Derek got us all up early to start the long drive home. Though it added about an hour to our drive, we decided to detour a little and go to Devil’s Tour. 

 I’m glad we did and we did the little 1 mile loop trail around the bottom. It was really so pretty up there with the pine trees overlooking the green rolling back of the black hills. And Devil’s Tower was pretty spectacular. We saw people rock climbing it. So beautiful and peaceful, there were Indian prayer cloths tied to several of the trees and bushes. The last stop of the trip was to Martin’s Cove on the way home. The kids got a kick out of pulling some handcarts around. 

 We saw an old bunkhouse and washroom, and a super neat fireplace made from rocks in the area which included fossilized wholly mammoth tusks. We watched a movie about the Martin Cove pioneer rescue, and then headed home. It was a great Memorial Day weekend and kick off to our summer.