Life At The Circus

Saturday we left Mt Rushmore and drove 4.5 hours north to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND.  A visit to this park meant an approximately 9 hour driving detour from what could have otherwise been a short hop from Mt. Rushmore to the SD Badlands.  Sometimes a quest such as our forces your hand to take some pretty circuitous routes…  we set off not exactly sure what the ND badlands had to offer that the SD badlands did not.  After a buffalo burger dinner in Medora, we were off to find out. We took a sunset drive along the scenic route and the answer became clear… ANIMALS.    We got to see a wide variety of wild animals during our drive. We saw 3 different buffalo.  Two from afar and one very up close… so close in fact that we watched him cross the road in front of us.  We also saw plenty of prairie dogs, an antelope, and a herd of wild horses! After sunset, when it was just about dark, we came across a herd of elk and 2 b...

11 years ago when Scott and I did our first National Park/Cross Country trip, we drove through Wind Caves National Park.  We hadn’t yet begun our quest to see every National Park, so we actually just drove through the park and enjoyed the prairie dogs and buffalo.  It was literally a stop on our way, not a destination in itself.  This time, Scott and I wanted to see the park the right way and go on a cave tour. (And as an added bonus we get to take a new picture of ourselves in front of the sign instead of the one where we posed as a prairie dog and buffalo…. long hours in the car can make one do loony things)   This time we again got to see prairie dogs.  However, we didn’t find any buffalo in the park.  The kids enjoyed sitting out by the field and listening to the chatter of the prairie dogs as well as watching them pop up and down in their holes.     We also went on a hour and half hike/tour inside of wind cave.   Wind Ca...

Between the long, late day at Black Falls of the Gunnison and the crazy hot and dirty hike at Great Sand Dunes, Scott and I found ourselves ready for a reprieve.  So, we readjusted our schedule a bit and drove 3 hours to a hotel about an hour from Colorado Springs.  There we chilled.  I took the kids for a quick dip in the pool while Scott ran out to get us a pizza.  Then we had pizza and a movie in our hotel room.   It was a welcome break for us all.  The next day we opted to skip the activities we had planned to do in Colorado Springs and drive straight on to the Black Hills of South Dakota.   We found a camp ground with TONS of kids activities and thought the kids would appreciate two nights there.    We arrived around 7pm and realized it might make sense to go straight on to Mt Rushmore as the kids were super psyched for this destination and the lighting ceremony at night is pretty neat.  So, we drove straight past t...

We arrived at Great Sand Dunes National Park in the middle of the night so our first view of the dunes was when we opened up our tent the next morning.   We thought for sure we wouldn’t be able to get a site since they were first come first serve and we were so very late.  But once again we were blessed with a camp site in the park.  We got to experience a real desert hike here.  The sand on the dunes reach  a temp of 120 degrees in the afternoon.  We got a bit of a late start for a dune hike, but went on anyway.  After all it was only 1/2 mile each way…   Scott chose a hike that he knew would have water so we could get relief from the heat.  Good call Dad. The kids LOVED playing in the wet sand.  It was a welcome relief after the hike.  And a great place to set up a “base camp” for the dunes.   Scott and I took turns running on the dunes with the big 3 while the other stayed with the little man as he...