South Dakota

You know you're in South Dakota when... instead of cows on the side of the road, there's bison.

Mt. Rushmore did not disappoint! Neither did South Dakota in general. While we were a little disappointed that we couldn't follow in the footsteps of "National Treasure" and go behind the faces to discover a treasure, or "North by Northwest" and climb down the presidents' faces it was still super cool to get to see the monument in person. You could still get pretty close and see it really well which was cool. We did watch both of those movies while on this trip. National Treasure 2 was a big hit. North by Northwest was less of a hit, except for the love scenes. Those got a big reaction. Clearly we are no longer in the phase of life where we can hope that things will just go over people's heads.  The lines, "I'm a big girl." "Yes, and in all the right places." Generated much mockery and guffawing. 

fulfilling a Jr. Ranger requirement to hug a tree. Clearly she was very enthusiastic about it.

There were a couple places in the parks where we hiked that had holes blasted through rock in order to continue the roads. They were only big enough for one car to drive through at a time so you had to sort of try to guess when the cars on the other side were going to let you through/play chicken.

We also did some hiking in South Dakota. The area that we did our biggest hike in was called the Needles. It was really beautiful and the kids had fun climbing on all the rocks. 

All around town there were bison statues. The kids started calling them like you call Herbies in the Herbie game. First it was fun. Then it got competitive. Then it got shut down.

Let it be known that while I am responsible for the pants being tucked into socks (tick prevention) I was not responsible for assembling the outfits.

The kids loved the RV that we stayed in. Collin and me not so much. It felt like sleeping on a boat as you could feel the whole thing move in the wind.

While we were in South Dakota we decided to do an Alpine Slide. There were two tracks, one was the fast track and one was the slow track. Neither track ended up being that fast, but it was a fun thing to have done.