South Dakota?? Who knew there was so much to see?

Over nearly 48 hours we explored so many sites and museums.  Where you ask?  D.C.? Philly?  No, in South Dakota!

We began with a great tour at Wind Cave National Park, a long time national park, with it’s own barometric pressure, so some time air is sucked into the cave network, and sometime it is pushed out, depending on the air pressure outside.  When the air is pressure stabilizes by pushing air out of the 148 mile network, it feels like “wind” blowing out of the cave. 

Next we visited a cool private non-profit paleontology dig site, called Mammoth Site.  This crazy formation in the Black Hills was formed when an odd sink hole formed almost 20,000 years ago.  The sink hole in the limestone, over centuries filled with warm water, attracting animals, particularly mammoths, who fell into the waterhole, since there was a near vertical drop at the edges of this water.  There have been over sixty mammoth remains recovered at this location, now all on display, even though it is an active paleontological site!  So cool!   

We then made our way to Rushmore in the evening.  It was cool and important for Simon, who really wanted to see this!  I’m not sure that Brian and I were moved by this, but they did manage to complete this sculpture in 14 years!

That night we drove to the Badlands and arrived with the full moon!  So cool.  I made everyone get out and look at the cool rock formations in the moonlight on the way to our campsite, at nearly 11pm.  (By the way, we have totally failed at parents at getting enough sleep for our kids.  Over one week, we have switched time zones four times, and we keep them up late far too often… but we decided that they have the rest of the summer to recover!)

The Badlands National Park was very cool—I didn’t know that these beautiful rock spires formed 500,000 years ago and will be gone 500,000 years from now (a blink of an eye geologically speaking) due to the erosion with each rainstorm.  We were able to explore this park that next day, in high heat, and enjoy the prairie dogs, too!

Claire has become super excited about the Junior Ranger Program-- here she is being sworn in at the Badlands!

After this, we went to a super-cool National Site Minuteman Missile Historical Site, only 10 miles from the Badlands.  We learned a ton about the Cold War and way the US Government placed all our inter-continental ballistic missiles in the plains.  I knew nothing about this, and the kids learned a ton about the Cold War and how to we taught children to protect themselves (under the desk everyone!).

We ended our two days in Sioux Falls at a great RV park with a cool pool, which made everyone happy! After this we were on to Wisconsin and a great wedding! J