Vacation Part III

Hey, everybody, sorry to leave you hanging. But you know how summer goes. So where was I? Oh, right, driving through South Dakota...

South Dakota is the largest state in these United States. Okay, not really. I don't think it even makes the top ten. But it certainly feels big when you are driving all the way across it! South Dakota is a well known tourist destination in it's own right. The Black Hills are truly beautiful and the area around Mount Rushmore has a bunch of kitchy, touristy spots that are really fun to visit.

And then there's the rest of the state. The 90% of SD that is not the Black Hills is mostly farmland and tourist traps. And the farther east you get, the more ridiculous and desperate they get. "Last chance to see the biggest teepee ever made out of drinking straws!"

Here is a giant stretched car on top of a billboard. (Which, by the way, is one of 7 million billboards that blemish the lovely farmland through which I-90 travels.) I think this is advertising a car museum, which I think the husband would have enjoyed if we weren't so tired and weren't in such a rush to get home.I really have no idea what this was all about. Clearly it's a T-rex skeleton, and it's human owner, out for an evening stroll. Totally normal right? Except that this was just outside of the (in)famous 1880 Town, which is a replica of an 1880 town. (Thus the clever name.) I think the lesson here is that back in 1880, human and dinosaur skeletons were able to exist peacefully together. We can all learn a little something from history.

After a LOOOONNNG day in the car, we decided to stop in the Rapid City area and stay the night. We saw multiple RV parks in the Black Hills on our way, and we hoped that there might be a vacancy in one of them. It was still several weeks until the famous Bike Rally, so we hoped that pulling in to town at 9pm wouldn't have us camping in the Walmart parking lot. (We drove past Sturgis, which it turns out is just a normal, suburban town for 50 weeks of the year.)

We pulled into a really cute RV park, which was across the street from Reptile Gardens. (We didn't go...the husband and I have been before and the angel wasn't interested in a zoo dedicated to snakes and spiders. *shudder*) After relaxing for awhile, we decided to stay an extra day in the Black Hills to rest before another 8 hour day in the car.

We had taken the husband's older boys on a trip there back in 1998, but the angel had never been. So we went to Mount Rushmore, which is pretty cool the first time, but if you have been there 7 or 8 times (like I have) you start to see the hype. The angel took one look and said, "Neat," and then asked where we would be eating lunch. But first we made the kids pose for pictures...it just felt like the right thing to do.

We stopped in Keystone, the ultimate of ultimate tourist trap towns, and rode the Alpine slide. (Which was actually kind of fun!) And I drug the husband through the Presidential Wax Museum. This was actually really cool, and he even admitted afterward that it was fun and educational. Even the angel was enjoying herself, and they give you little remote control things that narrate the tour, so she was learning a lot about our past presidents.

We followed up by visiting the Prairie Berry winery, where Mommy had a great time sampling wine and Daddy got to entertain the kids. I bought some Red Ass Rhubarb wine, which is a little sweet for my taste but I plan to save it for a special occasion.

And after all that, the ride home was pretty uneventful. As exciting as vacationing is, as fun as it is to travel and see new things, it always feels good to come home. And, a month later, I'm STILL trying to get caught up on laundry.