On Saturday, July 23rd we left for a one week adventure to South Dakota. Our first stop was in Worthington, MN for lunch at the Ground Round. We continued our drive and stopped in Mitchell to see the World Famous Corn Palace.
This is the only corn palace in the world. It was pretty cool to see.
They change the outside of the corn palace every year.
The inside of the corn palace is even decorated. They do not have to redo this as often.
Hannah really enjoyed her ice cream treat at the little shop across from the corn palace. She loves "pink" ice cream.
Then we finished our drive for the day to
Oacoma, SD to stay in the Days Inn. We went swimming at the hotel. Hannah loves swimming and is getting really comfortable. She is starting to put her arms and legs in motion together. Chloe also loves the water. Although at this point, she mostly tries to drink it.
Sunday was another travel day, although we managed to pack it full of adventures. We were able to make it to the Badlands National Park in time for lunch.
The Badlands is beautiful. It is mostly a place that you drive through and stop at the overlooks.
There were a few places that you could go "climbing". We took full advantage of this time. Hannah and Andy loved to climb to the top.
Hannah loves adventure!
We gave Hannah her own camera to take pictures with. It was interesting to see the world through a 3 year
old's perspective.
On our drive to Custer we stopped at the World Famous Wall Drug. There were too many billboards to count on the way out not to stop. It was cool to say that we stopped but it wasn't that great. The ice cream was terrible!! After Wall we drove to the Best Western in Custer where we stayed for two nights. We had dinner at Cattleman's. It was okay, but not great.
On Monday we went to Custer State Park in the morning. We started off with a hike around Legion Lake.
This is Legion Lake behind Andy and Hannah.
Hannah loved hiking and climbing up the rocks. Both girls did wonderful with the mile hike.
Legion Lake
Chloe loved enjoying the beautiful outdoors.
After hiking Legion Lake, we took the Needle Highway Scenic Drive to Sylvan Lake. It was a beautiful, but very narrow and winding road.
Sylvan Lake is gorgeous. We went on a ~ 1 mile hike around it.
We drove back to Custer for lunch at the Purple Pie Place. It was a cute little lunch/ice cream place.
Hannah really liked the purple pig outside of the restaurant.
After lunch we headed to Wind Cave National Park.
On the way to the cave, we saw bison, antelope, and
prairie dogs in the wild.
Once at Wind Cave we took the 1.5 hour guided tour through the cave. There is ~ 136 miles of discovered cave within 1 square foot mile. It is one of the largest caves in the world. This is only natural
occurring entrance into the cave. This is where the original explorers would enter the cave.
Hannah loved going on the tour. She did a great job listening to the guide and staying on the path.
This is one of the places that they let people climb through during one of the guided tours. It looked like a fun tour to go on.
Today we had another packed full day. We started off going to the Crazy Horse. We saw the orientation movie and did the guided tour.
It was interesting to hear the history and to see a work in progress. It will be interesting to come back later and see how it changed.
The part that amazed me was to see how big it is compared to Mount Rushmore.
This is one of the replicas of what the final product will look like.
After Crazy Horse we went to Mount Rushmore.
Chloe really enjoyed Mount Rushmore. She slept the whole time until we went to lunch.
We stopped in Keystone on the way back. We were thinking about going on the 1880 train but it was too long of a wait so we decided to go to the Reptile Garden instead.
It was $15/person which seemed a little spendy but it was worth it. Hannah loved the snakes.
Chloe really like the tortoises. There were two of them.
There was an alligator show. There was a guy who showed how to wrestle with an alligator as well as how to feed them. I have always wanted to know how to wrestle an alligator. You never know when you might need to have that skill :)
This is in front of the largest alligator.
There was also a tropical place with birds, turtles, snakes, and lizards that were not caged up. Hannah really enjoyed touching the snakes.
Chloe thought that the snake was pretty cool too.
On Wednesday we had a very kid friendly day. We started off at the Storybook Island. It is a free park that is big and amazing. The girls loved it!
They had just about every popular children's books represented. This is the 3 little pigs.
We tried really hard to get 2 princesses in the picture, but Hannah would not stand there for more than a split second. She wanted to look at the front of it.
We let the girls take the train ride around the park. They both enjoyed it!
Chloe really enjoyed swinging.
At the end of the day, we let Hannah pick out whatever toy she wanted at the gift shop. We were a little nervous to give her the option to pick out whatever she wanted, but it was going to a good cause. The gift shop is what helps support the park. After much deliberation, Hannah decided on a Fairy Melissa and Doug puzzle.
After the Storybook Island, we went to the Dinosaur Park. It had 8 different cement dinosaurs up on the top of a hill. You could climb up on top of some of them. Chloe slept through the whole experience even when Andy climbed to the top of them.
After the Dinosaur Park, we went to Bear Country. It is a place that you drive through and the animals roam free in their area. They come right up to your car.
Their were reindeer, elk, bighorn sheep, bison, wolves, mountain lions, and bears. There were probably over 50 bears!
It is amazing to me how many antlers the reindeer had. It looks like they should just tip over.
It was amazing to see all of the animals up close. Although at one time Hannah asked if she could watch Dora. It made me laugh that in the midst of seeing some really cool things, Hannah wanted to watch Dora.
Unfortunately our camera battery died when we got to the bears, so we do not have a bunch of the bear pictures. We did get some good videos.
The bears walked right around our car.
At the end they had more animals and baby animals in Babyland. The girls got personalized animal cups at the gift shop. After Bear Country we decided to go back to Sylvan Lake to go swimming. It was kind of a long drive but it was fun to go back. Hannah loved playing in the sand with a new friend that she met, while Chloe tried eating the sand. On our way back to the hotel, we went to dinner at the Firehouse Brewery. It was very good.
This is the hotel and slide at the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City. Hannah loved swimming. She went down the slide by herself one time. Her face had shear terror the whole way down and then she went underwater even with her floaties on. She was not impressed by the experience.
Andy loved going down the slide. He went down head first even with the sign that said "feet first only". Then he tried to get as much speed as possible.
The next day we took off to Sioux Falls, SD to stay for a night at the Best Western Hotel. On Friday we drove the rest of the way back to Rochester for a quick stay. On Saturday we packed the car back up to head to Family Camp.
