South Dakota Vacation Day 5

Day five of our trip started out with a trip through the Black Hills to one of our nation's greatest: Mouth Rushmore!

It was a beautiful morning and there were tons of people out sight seeing. It was sooo funny to see all the different tourists that came to visit. I could have sat and people-watched for hours. We kept running into these bus loads of older adults and it seemed like they had a little uniform: visor, sensible walking shoes, enormous sunglasses, camera and binoculars. Bonus points awarded to the couples who were dressed alike to boot! :o) It looked like they were having a great time and I can't wait until I can get in on some of those tour groups-they always go on neat trips!





Someone was nice enough to take our photo. I probably should have cropped that lady out, whoops!





The sky was such a beautiful blue with no clouds at all. I love it!

After Mount Rushmore we headed to the Crazy Horse Memorial since we were in that neck of the woods. I actually enjoyed the experience at Crazy Horse much more than Mount Rushmore. We watched a video about the sculptor and how tedious it was carving the mountain and how they have been offered government funds lots of times to finish it but they think it should be a monument for the people, paid for by the people who come there.

When finished it will be way huger than Mount Rushmore. In fact, all four heads from Mount Rushmore would fit inside Crazy Horse's head. I had no idea!



After Crazy Horse, we headed towards Custer State Park. On the way we stopped at Sylvan Lake, which was seen in the film National Treasure: Book of Secrets.



We had fun hiking around the lake and even met up with some boy scouts who knew all the cool places to go like between big boulders!



We spent the night at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park. It was beautiful!

Michael entertained himself for hours with the mirror on the wardrobe. He kept trying to eat the little face in the mirror! He would bang and bang on it and then laugh and yell.

Scott took me out for a nice dinner at the restaurant at the State Game lodge where we split a bottle of wine and I had a buffalo fillet! It was to die for!

South Dakota Vacation Day 4

Day four of our vacation started out with a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs at our campsite. We bought a whole package of really good bacon and we ate the whole thing! The funny thing is we were full for our hours afterwards-isn't bacon wonderful?

Michael had a fun time playing in his pack and play outside while Scott and I cooked. He loved the little stream that ran right outside our camper. It was really cool.

After breakfast we headed back into Deadwood to check out the sites. I really wanted to visit Deadwood since I had watched the entire HBO series a couple summers ago. I had these big fantasies in my mind of how it would look and I was really disappointed that it was mostly gambling.

However I did find some gems like Al Swearingen's suit from the series and the historic locations of the big events that happened here.

We also checked out the Midnight Star casino which is owned by Kevin Costner. At last, I got to see some Dances with Wolves memorabilia!

Later that night we headed back to the campsite and had a nice dinner of fried trout that we caught ourselves! The campground had a little pond you could through a line into and they would fry up what you caught. It was pretty funny how quickly you caught a fish!

We ended the night with a camfire and some beers! It was a great day!

South Dakota Vacation Day 3

Day three of our vacation started out with an early morning drive out to Devil's Tower.


It was a beautiful day!

It took us about an hour and a half to drive there from our campsite at Lead/Deadwood. I was worried about the drive but it went really smoothly since Michael snoozed the entire time!

We did the two mile hike around the base of Devil's Tower. It was a beautiful morning! Wait, did I say that already?

We alternated carrying Michael on our back and in our arms. He did pretty well in the carrier, but got tired after a while. Everyone LOVED saying hi to him when he was on my back, especially little kids. People would ask when they were getting a ride and how much Michael looked like he was living the life! So funny!


There was a big prairie dog village at the base of the tower and they were so fun to watch! Most people stayed on the side of the road and watched, but I ventured out to get a close shot. This little guy was really chirping at me!

Have you ever seen the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind?"

We watched it the night before so we would be ready to see the tower in all of it's glory. Such a cheesy movie, but it was nice to set the tone for the trip.





Lots of people were climbing on the rocks and the tower and it looked like lots of fun!

If you didn't have a permit you could only climb on the rocks which were at the base, which was fine with us!

After the hike, we had a nice picnic at one of the areas in the park. It was relaxing to chill around for a bit. Michael was excited to be out of his carseat and carrier and was having lots of fun playing in the dirt.

On the way back to the black hills, we drove through the scenic Spearfish Canyon and stopped at this little stream to hike around a bit. You could put your feet in but it was FREEZING!

Michael was not a fan; he would scrunch his feet up to his body when Scott tried to dip them in.

The other movie we wanted to watch before our trip was Dances with Wolves; one of my favorites. However, we didn't get a chance to see it BUT we did drive by one of the filming sites for the movie.

Here it is:

Amazing, right?

I hope you are catching my sarcasim, because I was not impressed. I couldn't even remember a part in the movie that looked like this place. Scott told me it was when they were in their winter camp. Who knows?

After we got back to Deadwood we had a nice dinner in the Salon no. 10 and walked around a bit downtown. It was a great dinner and we slept well that night after our busy day!

South Dakota Vacation Day 2

Day Two: The Badlands

I apologize if this takes forever to load on your computer-I had too many good photos to share!

I LOVE it when blogs have big photos. If you are going to go through all the work to post a photo, why not make it big? It was probably the biggest breakthrough of my blogging career when I finally figured out how to make a photo big. Yay!

I was pretty excited to drive through the Badlands. We had cruised through here when I was on my trip with my brother and grandparents but it was storming the night we went through so I didn't actually get to see too much.

It was so much fun to take pictures! I saw a lot of cool cameras and tripods from other tourists and I was jealous. I was also jealous of the people climbing around on the rocks, but we will have to wait to do that when we are not hauling around an 8 month old.
Real men wear babies.

I took this panorama using autostitch. I love how they turn out! I think if you click on the photo you can see a bigger version of it. Yes...bigger! :o)

Also a word of advice: if you ever go on a South Dakota vacation, the majority of your time will be spent driving around. It took us a couple of hours to drive through the park and at one point we ran into some road construction, hence the killing time photos!

Mountain goats!
Or sheep? Rams? Anyone? I have no idea.

I loved the badlands! What a wonder of the world! Can you imagine finding this if you were an early American explorer? Would that just blow your mind or what?

Our next stop was at Sturgis!

We saw all these people buzzing around town on little scooters and we thought it was kind of odd. We thought maybe there was a place you could rent them in town?

We were wrong! There was a Cushman rally going on and everyone brought their scooters to show off!

We had a lot of fun checking out all of the bikes. Isn't it fun when you have little surprises on your vacation?

We also had a stop-over in Rapid City for a quick lunch and then we headed to our campground for the night! It was a great day!