Camping in the Black Hills

My family took our second annual family vacation to the Black Hills of South Dakota. My mom, four sisters, one brother, one brother-in-law, and two nieces met us up there. It was a lot of fun! The first day we explored Badlands National Park. It was like hiking through giant sandcastles. The views were spectacular and definitely unlike anything we had seen before.Regan and Haden both loved running around and throwing rocks after spending all of the day before in their carseats. We stopped at Wall Drug Store on the way home. All of their roadside signs advertising homemade ice cream had everyone salivating after hiking in the hot sun. They had a lot of photo ops in their "backyard" which we took advantage of. The kids loved running through the water fountains that were set to music. Regan got wet several times, but she just laughed. (She HATES having water anywhere on her face, but apparently she is a lot more tolerant if it isn't during a bath.) There was a T-Rex that came to life every few minutes roaring at waving his head around. Both Regan and Haden began screaming at the first growl and didn't stop until long after they could no longer see the dinosaur. We stopped at Mt. Rushmore for their evening program on the way back to camp. Everyone slept very well that night.

The second day, one group toured a cave and one group hiked Harney's Peak. It is a seven mile round trip hike up to an abandoned fire tower; also the highest peak between the Rocky Mountains and the Swiss Alps. Regan was an amazing little hiker and Haden was very tolerant of his backpack. The fire tower was made of rock and resembled a castle. We kept telling Regan that Rapunzel lived in the tower and we needed to save her. It worked for a while, but then she started telling us to let the prince save her because she couldn't "do this anymore." She did get another burst of energy when she saw the tower and was rather disappointed that Rapunzel was already gone. The view at the top was amazing. You could see forever in all directions, if you didn't mind the wind that was blowing incredibly hard. A storm was blowing in and we had to outrun it on our way down the mountain. The light rain made for perfect hiking weather, but the thunder and lightening were just a little scary. We spent that afternoon at Mt. Rushmore, so we could get pictures in the light.

The last day we drove through Custer State Park. Regan was very impressed with the buffalo, but didn't care for the donkeys. They beg food off the tourists, and if you don't roll down your window to feed them, they slobber all over your windows. Regan insisted that we not roll down her window when two donkeys had their entire head in Clint's window going after the pretzels.

On the way home we went through a rainstorm and pointed out the rainbow to Regan. She was craning her neck to see, and in a disappointed voice said, "Mom, I don't see any Care Bears. They are supposed to be sliding down the rainbow and playing on the clouds. Where are they?" I didn't quite know how to respond.