Life At The Circus

We set out from our friends in Iowa and headed north east.  Our destination was the suburbs of Chicago. Scott and I visited Chicago last year for our anniversary and while I loved the city and would love to visit it again, we didn’t feel this was the trip to take the family into the city.  Instead we planned a stop at Lego Discovery Center outside of the city.  The kids enjoyed it.  There was a few little ride.  They enjoyed the one where they got to shoot laser guns the most. We watched 2 different 4D lego themed movies.  I was impressed with the Lego displays.   My 7 year old enjoyed pretending to pick their noses.  The kids and Scott also really enjoyed just sitting and playing with Legos.  They each designed their own cars and raced them down the track.  Afterwards we drove about 20 minutes to a beautiful area of the Chicago suburbs to visit an ADORABLE train themed restaurant that my friend had told me about.  I knew...

After leaving the Badlands, we were Eastward bound and on the homeward stretch.  We planned lots of fun stops for this part of the journey, knowing it was the final stretch and wanting to change it up a bit and keep things fun and exciting. Our first such stop was in Sioux Falls, SD.  I found a hotel there that had a water slide and a splash pool.  There was also a put put course in town.  After a short 4 and a half hour drive, we arrived at our hotel with plenty of time to play.    I was surprised that even the littlest circus member enjoyed the big water slide.  He went down  all by himself with his floaty and Daddy caught him at the end.  After playing in the pool, we enjoyed pizza in our room and finished watching Wreck it Ralph (the movie we started at our last hotel/pizza night).  Then it was off to put put! The next morning we woke up and drove another 4 and half hours to Iowa where we stayed with a college friend o...

Well, I am really sad to say our trip is winding down.  We visited the last National Park of our vacation and we can count the number of days left on our trip on one hand.  The last park on this grand vacation was Badlands National Park in South Dakota.  We hit the Badlands on a great day and a great time of day.  The sun was low in the sky making the colors pop out.  The temperature was also quite pleasant for climbing and hiking around in the hills (a.k.a buttes).  We had a nice picnic dinner and afterwards we told the kids they could once again climb on the “playground”.  I turned around to see my 5 year old leading the pack half way to the top! My 7 year old isn’t one bit afraid of stepping out on the overlooks either. It was fun to walk around in the midst of the Badlands.  The mounds (“buttes”) look and feel up close like your walking on plaster of paris.   While we were hiking the kids spotted some wild mountai...

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...