"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." Angela Schwindt

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

South Dakota Vacation Post #1

I know it has taken me awhile to post some vacation pictures, but I was overwhelmed. We have a wonderful time and did so many things and took so many pictures I did not know where to start. I think I will tell you about our vacation in pieces. I don't want to leave anything out.

We left home on a rainy Saturday morning. This was fine with us. We were going to be in the car traveling across Iowa all day. We loaded down the Jeep and I mean loaded her down. There was no space unused. We hit the road around 8:00 a.m. and set out to cross Iowa. Around 5 p.m. that night we entered Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This was our stop for the night. In the morning we would cross South Dakota to get the the Black Hills with a stop in the Badlands on the way. We found the Falls in Sioux Falls and the kids played on the rocks and we had some fun then went to find some good food at the local Cracker Barrel and of course swim in the hotel pool (hot tub for Matt and I).

On Sunday we traveled across South Dakota heading for Custer State Park. We had to stop for a few classic sights we were told we had to see. The first stop was in Mitchell, SD for the Corn Palace. The outside of this building in decorated in corn. Every year they change the murals. This years theme was "Everyday Heroes". We were there about 15 minutes. Enough to say "Yup, cool, let's go"!! The next stop was in Wall, SD to see Wall Drug. Now everyone we talked to said that we had to see Wall Drug. The signs for this place started in Iowa and we counted around 40 all together before you finally get to the place. All I can say is that now I can say I have been there. I was not impressed. It was quite possibly the largest junk shop I have every seen and in my opinion a complete waste of time, but oh well.

We went to the Badlands which are awesome. The kids played on them for awhile and we drove the loop. I will include pictures of them later. Then we arrived at our cabin around 5:00 Sunday evening.

The first day of our trip we did a Cowboy Breakfast ride at Palmer Gulch Stables. At the end of the week this actually ended up being everyone's favorite thing that we did. We had great trail guides and great horses. I had Keg, Matt had Pat, Shelby had Flash, and Jake had Sushi. We were in a group of about 16 people with 3 trail guides. We took a 45 minute ride up to a lookout area and stopped there for a breakfast of French toast, fruit salad, hashbrowns, and sausage links. Yummy! After breakfast we got back on our horses and continued on for another half hour. It was a lot of fun!

That afternoon we went to Jewel Cave National Monument. It was pretty cool. I will post pictures of our cabin in the next post about South Dakota!!

1 comment:

Angie said...

Wow, sounds like a great vacation! That trail ride sounds like such fun. Your kids will remember that forever!