Wednesday, July 28th
We had a successful night of sleep at the KOA. They don’t always work that great for us, but this one was very quiet. Mike wasn’t sleeping well so far on the trip. I sometimes sleep great and other times don’t but it doesn’t seem to catch up with me during the day.
We camped near what was billed as “South Dakota’s 1880 Town”, but since we’d seen so much of that we didn’t go there. Instead we went to the 50’s Diner in a train for breakfast! That was pretty fun. The girls got to see how eating on a train might work. The diner is in an actual train with the kitchen and three dining cars. Very unique experience.
Then on we headed west again. We decided to take the scenic route through the Badlands. That was worth the trip. The mountain spires there are awe inspiring. I didn’t know what the “Badlands” were, but they weren’t “bad”.
After that we drove into Rapid City and south toward Mount Rushmore into the Black Hills.
We had to find a camp site and I thought for sure that everything would be full, but we found a spot pretty easy. Once we disconnected from the trailer, we felt free and took off back to visit Rushmore.
The girls really seemed to think it was cool. I had been there before, but Mike hadn’t. We took a million pictures and bought our souvenirs. After that we drove south on a scenic highway that a friend told me about. It was so neat…they had spiral roads and tunnels cut to frame the Rushmore heads as you drove through.
Then it was dinner time so we went back to camp and took it easy for the rest of the evening. This time we didn’t have wi-fi and electricity. We were out in the woods. Anika was a big helper doing the dishes for me!
Thursday, July 29th
The next morning we went into Keystone, a little “western” town near Rushmore. It is full of shops, but not any especially cool. I guess by then we were “gift shopped” out. We did pick up a state magnet for every state we’ve visited this year. We’ll have to see if we can add to that collection over the years.
This statue was designed by the man that designed and carved the Rushmore Presidents.
We found a Little House connection in Keystone. It turns out that Carrie moved to Keystone and worked for the newspaper there. Laura and Almanzo visited her there several times over the years watching as Mount Rushmore was carved. Mary moved in with Carrie and her husband there after her parents died.
There were so many options of things to do around the Black Hills area that we couldn’t decide, so we just wandered back through the Black Hills north toward the freeway. We took the scenic route and found a beautiful waterfall.
We stopped and had Sassparilla at a Circle-B-Ranch Chuckwagon Supper & Music show, but wish we could have been there at 6:00 for their dinner and show.
Once we hit I-90 though, there wasn’t much else fun to stop and see. We stopped in Sheridan, WY at the KOA there to spend the night. That one was a little close to the freeway and full of people, but it had a pool and we slept okay.
Friday, July 30th
We knew that day would be mostly driving. We got up and again went west. The weather was nice, but we kept hoping to see a real storm with thunder and lightning. We saw them as we were driving, but kept just missing them.
We stopped at the Battle of the Little Bighorn where Custer fell to the Indians of the area in Custer’s last stand. Mike and I were more interested in that than the girls. It is really such a sad story without any heroes. The funny part was that we ran into a family we knew from Burlington that go to His Place Church!
About one o’clock we pulled into Billings again to visit Gramma and Grampa. It was good to see them again and show them all our pictures from the trip. The bad part was that we had forgotten to plug the trailer into the van at the campsite in Wyoming, so our pigtail connection had bounced down the freeway all the way to Billings. So, Mike had to go buy a new one and figure out how to replace it. He got it all figured out and it seems to be working again.
We’ve had a couple other bumps on the trailer during the trip, but none as bad as killing our van last year when I hit a deer. Our stair got smashed in at one point. I guess we rolled down a driveway that was too steep. We hope to be able to remove it and bend it back into shape or buy a new one.
That evening we stopped and got dinner at Pickle Barrel in Bozeman as we went through. This time we only got a half of one sandwich to share. That was a nice amount.
The stormy sky over Montana was beautiful. We didn’t hit much rain, but we got to see the sheet of rain falling from a distance. Here is a double rainbow we saw…don’t know if you can see both rings.
We stopped at a campground right off a rest area on the freeway. It was west of Missoula. We didn’t make it all the way to Idaho as we had hoped, but it was a convenient and nice campground.
Saturday, July 31st
Then it was just driving on toward home. We had just about nine hours before home. We wanted to get home at a decent hour so we wouldn’t be too tired and could avoid driving at night because of our slight fear of dear.
We had fun stopping at a fruit/antique store along the freeway. We got a box of peaches and some cherries. I LOVED looking at all the old stuff. It was a pouring rain and thunder storm while we were there too, so the girls enjoyed that!
We made it home around 5:00 or so on Saturday. We enjoyed resting up the rest of the weekend, although we had to pick up our various pets. We are still missing Blaze, the fish, but we’ll be getting him from Great Gramma tomorrow.
This was a really great trip for our family! I am up for another road trip soon.
