The End of The Trail

Ok, now we are back home with decent internet. I have been scolded for the lack of posts and pictures. Needless to say the Black Hills are really mountains, and that along with trees wrecks havoc with cell service and wifi! We really had a good time. I will give a quick rundown of what we did the rest of the week and add pics.
Thursday- We took the kids to Reptile Gardens outside of Rapid City. It sounded pretty cheesy, but we were pleasantly surprised-who would have thought someone would have a large reptile collection in the middle of nowhere. Keegan loved the snakes, alligators and crocodiles. It was really well run. Then, after lunch, we went out to the South Dakota Air and Space museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Ellsworth is the other base where B'1 bombers are based (just like Abilene). They had a neat collection of planes and an exhibit on the minuteman missle. We did not get to see a missle silo, but it was odd thinking that they had been there across the plains. We also visited the Rapid City WalMart. It may be the busiest Walmart I have ever been in. It was wild. Of course it is the only one for many miles. South Dakota is a little sparse in places. The Sonic has been open for 2 months, and they have people directing traffic because they are so busy. It is pretty funny. If you don't ask for extra ice, they don't give you much at all. Coley says it is a cultural difference.
On Friday we drove out to the Badlands. They are definitely bad. It was hot! We also went through Wall on the way and stopped at the famous Wall Drugstore. We had buffalo burgers and bought donuts. They were yummy and we ate our way through the Badlands. Wall drug was famous because it offered free ice water to the people traveling through on the highway. It opened back in the 30's. It is a giant tourist trap now, but pretty neat.
Saturday we drove through Custer State Park on this road called the Needles highway. The road wound through many rock formations, and there was one tunnel that was just over 8 feet wide. It was pretty. We also drove the wildlife loop-Custer is supposed to have a large herd of Bison, but all we saw were pronghorn and deer. We went down to Wind Cave and took a cave tour. Out mistake here was that Serena was hungry and tired, but off we went. You have to take guided tours. It is not like Carlsbad. The path is narrow and I had to duck down in spots. We went down between 300-400 steps. It was cool. Serena was not so thrilled. Coley and I took turns fighting her. She wanted to walk by herself but it just was not safe. She wanted out! It was really interesting, but I decided I was not meant to be a spelunker.

We had a great trip. Keegan horrified the people camping next to us from Minnesota one night. They were talking about putting out the fire, and one of their little boys asked how they would do that. Keegan, being the redneck that he is, said you pee on it. The other little boy thought that would be cool, and said really? His mom said that is not appropriate. I was not there, but Coley said he had to work not to laugh.

We left Hill City, South Dakota at 6:45 Sunday morning, and pulled into our driveway at 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning. We weren't planning on driving all the way in, but when we got to Dumas and realized we were only 5 hours from home, we thought why stop now when we could be home. The kids were wonderful in the car all day (it was scary!), and they went to sleep. I felt jetlagged all day yesterday, but we are home! Serena has pulled all of her toys out to check them all out. The dogs are happy to see us, and the trailer is unloaded. Now I just have to go out and clean it so we can put it up until the next trip.We might see about trading it in for something more durable. It has about 15,000 miles on it, and it does not seem to wear well at long distances. I will do a seperate post with just pics from the last few days.