South Dakota Trip
Well, we just got back from a week's long vacation to South Dakota. This is really the first vacation we've taken where it's been just the two of us since our honeymoon (most of our vacations involve our families). So, we had a nice and romantic trip!
We left on Sat, July 2, and drove out to Vermilion, SD, home of not much other than our good friends Phil and Amber! Seriously, there wasn't much there, but it was a lot of fun to hang out with them. We introduced them to Settlers, and we're happy to say that we hooked them! While there we visited Sioux Falls, which is about an hour from their house. It was a beautiful day, and we enjoyed romping around on the rocks! On the 4th of July we mostly chilled. Phil took us out in his truck and "showed us what it can do". David got to drive it off-roading, and had a little too much fun I think! We saw fireworks from their small town, and it wasn't bad at all for a small town, a very good firework show. We watched them from the truck bed, which some how seemed very fitting!
On Tuesday we said good-bye to them, and headed out West. We took most of the day to drive out there and enjoyed the scenery. We stopped at Wall Drug (how could you not after the 100's of billboards we saw for the past 300 miles!). And then we drove through the Badlands National Park. It was BEAUTIFUL. There was about 10 or so scenic stops on the drive and we got out and climbed around and took pictures. It was so different looking than anything we had every seen! As we were at the last stop, we started hearing some weird noises. It sounded like there were pieces of rock moving. All of the sudden one moved near us, and David picked it up- and turns out it was a piece of hail, and the start of a hailstorm. We sprinted to the car, and by the time we got inside, the storm was full blown! It only lasted about 10 minutes, but it was quite an experience!! We drove to our hotel in Rapid City and got ourselves checked in. We then went out for dinner at the Firehouse Grill and then walked around Rapid City looking at the bronze statues of past Presidents.
Wednesday we got up early because we signed up for a day long tour of several tourist spots. We started off with a "cowboy" breakfast featuring all you can eat food (pancakes, biscuits and gravy, and sausage). Needless to say, David had his fill :) The tour started at Fort Hays, which is where they filmed some of the scenes from "Dances with Wolves". We then got on a tour bus and headed to Mt. Rushmore. That was the first time either of us had been there and it was pretty amazing to see the carvings. We also found out that the statues aren't actually finished. The funding ran out and they had to stop work, the original design called for waist high statues, not just the faces. We then drove through Custer State Park hoping to see some wildlife, primarily Buffalo. We saw a few of them and it was neat. We then took off for the Black Hills and that was very pretty. It was also quite interesting driving on a very narrow road up into the mountains. Some of the other drivers on the road had some very memorable expressions as they came face to face with a huge tour bus around a blind corner. We went to a game lodge for lunch and had Buffalo stew. We then went over to Sylvan Lake to walk around a bit. We then headed out to Needles Highway that has several small tunnels (smallest one was 8'6" wide and 11'6" tall, our bus was 8'3" wide and 11' tall). That was also an experience, it took about 5 minutes to drive through the small one, 1 inch at a time :) We made a stop at the Crazy Horse Monument as well to see how the work there is going. It's an impressive monument, several times larger than Mt. Rushmore. We then headed back to Ft. Hays where we ate a "Chuck-wagon" dinner, which was quite tasty. They then had an entertaining show afterwards with full band and some comedy. Overall it was a great day and we had a blast.
Thursday we got up and decided to go back to Sylvan Lake to take a hike up to the highest point East of the Rockies and West of the Pyrnees in Europe. It was a 6 mile round trip hike and we had a lot of fun. At the top there was an old (not used any longer) fire-house and lookout. There was a great view from up there and we could see a set of storm clouds forming not to far away. about 1/2 way down on our hike the rain started to come down. We got a little wet, but not too bad. We had a picnic lunch at the lake and then decided to drive back up through Needles Highway so that David could take his turn at driving through the tunnels (not quite as tricky in a little honda). We climbed around and took some great pictures. We also drove the Wildlife loop through Custer State Park to see if we could see any more wildlife. We saw a lot of Buffalo, some wild turkeys, a few wild Burro's, a snake, mountain goats, prairie dogs, rabbits, and antelope. It was really neat seeing the wildlife like that. It was a fun day and we had a great day. We had dinner at a salon called Red Rosie. Lisa had a buffalo burger and David had ribs.
Friday we checked out of our hotel and headed North up to Deadwood. A gambling town that is home to the grave of "Wild Bill" Hickok. Not exactly sure why he's famous, but that's just about all there is to Deadwood. So, we made it a quick trip and then headed back towards Vermillion. We went back through the Badlands to see some areas we hadn't already seen and David got to take his car on a side road that was dirt and gravel. He was loving every minute of it, he only wished that he'd a truck to do it in. We saw some great views and took a bunch of pictures. We ended the day by getting into Vermillion to stay at Phil & Amber's place before taking off for home on Saturday.
Overall we had a blast and would highly recommend books on tape/CD to anyone who is doing a long car trip. It was a great vacation and it was actually fairly relaxing considering we had early mornings and late nights just about everyday. Trip highlights: being with each other, seeing great friends, seeing some of God's beauty in nature. As we mentioned, we took loads of pictures. We have a trip Highlights section that has rouhgly 30 pictures to look through and then there's the Whole-Trip section with everything. Enjoy!