Author: laurie

Our last day in the area we drove over to Rapid City to do to the Geology Museum. I loved exploring all the exhibits on minerals and paleontology. I think I took 500 photos of the rocks and gems. The fossils were really cool as most came from the White River Formation nearby.

They we went to Dinosaur Park, it was a waste of time as far as dinosaurs so. They had three periods of Dinos mixed together and all pained with the same two colors of paint. We didn’t stay long.  Went back and picked up Dad for pizza and one last loop of the roads at Custer State Park.We finally were able to get up to the highest point in the park on the mountain. The jeep started to get really warm so we need to have that checked out too! 

Our plans didn’t work out as such but we had a fun time hiking around the lake. We were going to hike a different trail but it was closed and impassable due to snow and standing water. We did find lots of snow to play in. If you stepped really hard your feet and knees went under and you were standing in a wet puddle!  B made a little snowman. I scoped out some options for an alternate hike. No one wanted to climb under the rocks as the snow was melting. Probably a good idea! I got hot and had the idea of snow on my head! It helped a lot! Mom and B followed suit! It helped a lot! If you look carefully you can see B and I climbing up to the top of the rocks for our lunch spot. Mom got up ahead up us because we walked down to the water to skip rocks for a bit. On the final leg of the loop we ran into a guy we talked to earlier. He started a snowball fight with us! Totally random but we had fun! He showed us how to pack the snowballs really tight to get good distance!  Drying off and cooling off at the lake before heading back. We stopped and fed the burros on the way back to the campground to get Dad. For dinner we opted to do the chuckwagon cookout. We rode in the covered wagons in the pouring rain while listening to Keith tell stories and sing mountain songs. I always request Ghost Riders and B always requests Home on the Range.  Thankfully there was shelter for dinner and yummy food to stuff our faces with. Our photo with Mr. Keith. We fist did this when I was 5 or 6 so we have lots of photos with him now. 

We had a great exhausting day of exploring in the Badlands. We have been before a few years ago but felt we needed to do it all again now that we are older. We started at the Minuteman Missile NHS for Delta 1 rockets. We learned about the history of the program and how it was on guard to help protect us. The missiles were positioned so they could get anywhere around the world in a very short amount of time. Thankfully they were never needed.
I think I would have gone mad if I had to work in this pod for 24 hours. It was very tight. So small that they only allow 6 people on the tour at a time. They only run 6-8 tours a day! So this is a very exclusive look at the Minuteman Missile program. After our tour we hike the Window and Door trails at Badlands NP. We learned a lot about the rock formations and how it all came to be in the late Cretaceous period. If was getting hot and we didn’t have water left so we stuck close to the main trails and didn’t go more than a mile out. You could easily get lost if you don’t follow the signposts. I climbed and jumped off every rock I could find! At least the ones that didn’t end is a rocky craggy death below! Some of the drop offs were very very deep. Mom braved the off trail for a while. The toe was bugging her but she kept up. We hiked the Cliff Shelf as well. It was a zillion stairs both up and down. The total elevation gain was around 200 feet but you had to go down and back up a lot! Buffaduck had a tour with us. We ended at Wall Drug. It is a strange place full of strange things and yummy food. We visited a lot of the shops and all of the photos opportunities.  We stopped off at the South Dakota Air and Space Museuma t Ellsworth AFB to see if we could get a Delta 9 tour, like we had a few years ago. Sadly, since it was off season, they only ran the tours on the weekends. We still had fun in the simulators and exploring before heading back exhausted to Custer.

Sioux Falls was just an overnight stop on our travels. We arrived as it began to snow. No major accumulation but still a novelty for Florida kids.  It is May. We went outside and tried to catch snowflakes but the icy rain and snow were piercing and we only have sweatshirts for our vacation. We lasted 20 minutes and called it quits for hot cocoa. Mom managed to find a pizza place that delivered so we didn’t have to unhitch the car. This was one of our longer drive days so we were all ready for food we didn’t have to make!

Breighton has been taking classes at the Tarpon Campus of SPC so Mom and I get to hang out and wait since it is silly to drive home. Today we went exploring and found donuts. SO many donuts! I picked some Emoji Donuts and others. I really liked them but still kind of prefer Publix maple glazed. We went back to campus to walk around and there was an Earth Day event. I planted lucky bamboo, bean seeds, learned about some of the campus clubs and then snuggled a breaded dragon for nearly an hour while we waited for Breighton to finish with an extra study session for his final test. The next day we had our end of the year party for 4-H. This year went ice skating! We had so much fun. I am going to miss our regular club as we transition to the new archery program full time next year.  The next day we went to the laser tag place for Ellis’ birthday party. Hard to believe little Ellis is 8! Not so little anymore.  Mom took us to see a the Avengers movie at the Cinema Cafe. We arrived super early to make sure we got good seats. We got a bit goofy while waiting. We were acting out fight scenes but pretending to be scared. We came home to a frog on the motorhome! B got him off and then went to show me and it hopped into the garage. B had to go study for a final so Mom and I played HUNT THE FROG for an hour. After moving two shelves of tile we finally found the little bugger and released him back to the outside world.