The Black Hills are Beautiful!

We went on a family vacation over an extended Memorial Day Weekend to South Dakota.  It was incredibly fun!  We saw and did a lot!  What struck me the most was how beautiful the Black Hills are.  For some reason, I always pictured all of South Dakota like the never-ending prairie of the Badlands, but it is not so.  Besides that, Badlands National Park was also quite pretty, and the rock formations were remarkable!  Mt Rushmore was awesome too!  Though Jim and I both agreed we knew it would be smaller than we thought it was (if that makes sense).

We left Thursday night and stayed in a hotel in Buffalo, Wyoming.

Friday morning we headed to Devil's Tower National Monument, America's first national monument, located in Wyoming.  Hiking around the base was awe inspiring, continually looking up to see it towering above.  The weather was perfect for a hike too!

From Devil's Tower we drove to Badlands National Park in South Dakota and set up camp.  Michelle and Lena really loved camping, especially Lena! The sunset that night was incredible!

Saturday morning we did some serious backcountry hiking at Badlands.  It felt amazing and was wonderful to climb the rocks.  Lena had a good time too, even if she slept through half of it!

Saturday afternoon we left Badlands and drove to Mt. Rushmore.  I learned a lot that I didn't know about the landmark.  I didn't know that President Jefferson was originally carved on the left of President Washington, but he fell apart and they had to move him to the right.

From Mt. Rushmore we took the scenic route through Custer State Park, which was the nicest state park I have ever seen, to our campground at Wind Cave National Park.  We set up camp and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores.  Michelle tried to grab the hot end of one of our roasters and earned herself some impressive blisters, then she tripped outside the tent and got a bloody nose and lip.  Battle wounds or something like that . . .

It started raining Saturday night and rained all day Sunday and all night Sunday night.  We had to abandon camp and get a hotel because our tent got water in it and we couldn't dry it out and Michelle would not keep a blanket on and was freezing Saturday night.  Sunday we went down into Wind Cave and Monday we went to Jewel Cave National Monument.  They are the 2nd and 4th longest known caves in the world, so it was pretty neat, though carrying the girls through them was trying on the arms!

In between we stopped at The Mammoth Site.

Monday we drove up to Crazy Horse.  I didn't know anything about it.  It's a pretty ambitious plan that has been in motion for quite a long time already.  They won't accept any government funding, so the project will probably take a century to complete.  After that we drove to Casper, Wyoming where we stayed the night before heading home Tuesday morning.

In the back is the rock where they are carving crazy horse.

This is what it is supposed to look like when it is finished.