Day three! Despite the time change, everyone was doing a pretty good job of sleeping in past 5 a.m. woohoo! I had woken up early to do and turn in homework for my online grad class. Notice how our hotel room had FIVE beds and yet most everyone ended up in two beds. Yeesh.
We spent the morning enjoying the hotel, eating breakfast and swimming while I attended my 90-minute class. The wifi was awesome!
Then it was time to hit the road for the short drive back to Mt. Rushmore.
selfie game: nice try!
Scott is the best Mt. Rushmore spotter in our family...the anticipation to see it in the daylight was killing us!
There is was in all its beauty!
We arrived at the park right at midmorning- 10:30-11:00 and there was a long, slow-moving, line to get in. I would definitely advise visiting here first thing but it just wasn't possible with my school schedule. We got to park for free since our pass from last night was good for a whole week, score!
The above photo is of Scott running into the Grimes chamber president because...why not run into your neighbors while on vacation? It was a running theme this trip that we ran into families that we had seen at previous points in our trips- funny that everyone is in the black hills just runs in the same circles. They should sell touring plans!
As I mentioned in our Corn Palace post, you will see the level of poor cooperation in these photos as well. Looking back, it is not a super big deal but I was pretty upset about it at the time. The kids were being so whiny about the sun in their eyes and they did not want to take a good photo. It is true that we were there at pretty close to high noon and the sun was hot and brutal reflecting off the concrete. And it was crowded and there were lots of families there short on patience. We really had a much more pleasant experience in the evening but it was beautiful to view during the day too, even if I was the only one having fun.
"Look at how much fun we are having!" selfie fail.
:)
Michael was super stoked to pick out his souvenir from the gift shop, thanks to a ten dollar bill from Gramie before we left. He ended up picking out a little statue of the mountain and a South Dakota magnet. He was very particular about looking at all the things and making his choices carefully, all under the gun of Scott waiting in the extra long line for us (Scott's favorite move to keep people from dilly dallying in the store).
Scott didn't teach me this trick until later in the trip, but the secret to spotting Mt. Rushmore from a distance (even when you can't make out the faces) is looking for the square shape of that corner of the mountain. Mind blown. I have a hard time looking for the faces from a distance so I could never spot it until Scott shared the trick with me!
We hit the road again and went back to Keystone to have lunch and pick up supplies before heading to our cabin at Custer State Park.
Keystone is a really fun town and you can walk to all the places. The population is only about 300 people but in the summer they get international students on work visas to work at the subway, DQ, etc.
We ate at the Saloon- a la Westworld. What fun is vacation unless we can incoporate our favorite HBO tv series?
It was nice to take a break and enjoy an ice cold Sioux City Sasparilla. We also had the most epic game of eye spy ever.
We finally made it to Custer State Park and checked into our cabin! It was just as beautiful as I remembered!
We got settled in, went on a beer run, and got everything ready for dinner.
We had been carrying around this silly watermelon for days so we finally cut it up to eat it and also had the camping favorite of hamburger patty foil packets. The kids hated them (of course) but they hit the spot for me. Yum!
We ended our evening with the watching of Dances with Wolves in bed together. Michael really enjoyed the movie and that made my heart so happy because it is one of my all-time favorites. It was the perfect movie to watch on the trip because it is South Dakota at its finest!
(also because there was an episode of Westworld this season that featured host Sioux native Americans that spoke Lakoda and was shot so beautifully that it reminded me of Dances with Wolves.)
No comments:
Post a Comment