Dakotas Vacation - Day 4

After a crazy hailstorm, we woke up the next morning and headed out to the legendary town of Deadwood...

We toured the brothel which operated illegally until 1980. It was super interesting!

And drank in the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot to death during a card game...

We headed out to Spearfish Canyon afterwards, where Dances With Wolves was filmed...

Dakotas Vacation - Day 3

You can only get tickets to tour the caves at Wind Cave National Park same day and we had been told that they sell out every morning. So we got there at 8am and there was already a big line...

We got to see some of the 155 miles of explored caves and the 'box work' formations. In fact, over 90% of all boxwork in the world in in this park alone...

Above ground, the Park was virtually empty so we explored for a while. The scenery was beautiful:)

Then we headed south to Hot Springs, home of the Mammoth site where over 60 skeletons are currently being excavated... 

It was fascinating! We spent the rest of the day back in Custer State Park - there were hundreds of bison,,,

Dakotas Vacation - Day 2

After an amazing time at the Badlands and a fun evening in cheesy Wall, we started out the next day at the gorgeous Custer State Park...

Then we took the incredible Needles Highway up to Mount Rushmore...

We had a quick picnic at Sylvan Lake along the way:)

Each of the faces are about 60 feet in height. The movie about how they were carved at the museum was so interesting....

I had some reservations about visiting Mount Rushmore from my research beforehand but I was able to understand much more about why some people are offended by it by seeing and deciding for myself.  

Afterwards, we went to see the Crazy Horse memorial...

Although it's still a work-in-progress, the face is done (it's about 80 feet so the whole thing is much bigger than Mt Rushmore) and it's an amazing sight to see. There is also a huge cultural complex with so much to learn about the Native Americans from this area. We really loved it:)

It's Vacation time!

It's been a very long time coming so we were really excited to finally get on a plane again for an adventure-filled week-long vacation! We landed in North Dakota and were surprised that it was actually hotter than at home!

We set off bright and early for the first big driving leg to South Dakota. We were thrilled to run into the place where famous T-Rex Sue was discovered since we had just watched Dinosaur 13 right before we left!

We stopped by the Minuteman Missile site to see one of the hundreds of missiles that used to be staged in this area during the Cold War to fend off a nuclear attack...

We got to the Badlands National Park in great time and were absolutely blown away by the scenery. It is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen..

There were bighorn sheep everywhere!

And some beautiful bison and my fave prairie dogs too!

I was determined to do the Notch Trail but knew it was going to be tough...

It started out fine (although I actually fell on this part:))

The trail gets high and becomes just a ledge in places...

The log ladder section was really challenging for me...

Then lots of people turned back when they saw the signs...

But I stuck at it and the views at the end were spectacular!

But getting down that log ladder was harder than getting up (which was hard enough)...

So I was very relieved and proud of myself when we were all done:) We stayed in the Park for a breathtaking sunset...

What an amazing first day!