Travelblog episode 7: More Rushmore, some swimming, and a Kamping Kabin

So, the next morning we got up...boys relatively rested, girls not so much. Another check on the ol' weather forecast showed that there was a chance of thunder storms again that night, but that it would be gone the next night. Hmm...we didn't really want to drop another $200 or whatever on a pair of motel rooms, so we decided to try our luck with the KOA Kamping Kabin. Luckily for us the Hill City / Rushmore KOA had one with two rooms that they claimed slept 7. Perfect!

Rather than rush out of the hotel we took advantage of the free continental breakfast at the Ramada, the girls went for a swim, and eventually we checked out and headed in to Rapid City to buy tents and get lunch. The tents and some other essentials were procured at Target. Lunch was found at the Fire House brewery brew pub thing. Word of warning: don't order the taco salad. Why? Because while there's plenty of taco, there's no salad. Big ol' chip bowl thing, about six chunks of lettuce, and half a pound of ground beef. Paige had to ask for more salad. Seriously.

After lunch we headed back up to Mt. Rushmore to get a look at it in the daylight, and surprisingly it looked just like the postcards! Well, kind of...they had a bunch of wires hooked up to help haul up fireworks for the July 3rd fireworks show (why not on the 4th? No idea.)

The heads in the daylight

The gang with the mighty mountain


George peeking over the trees, Megan rocking it
in my cheap gas station cop shades

Once we'd had our fill of all things Rushmorian we headed back down the mountain to the Hill City KOA where we checked in to our Kamping Kabin. While the woman I'd spoken to on the phone that morning had assured me it had bunk room for seven, it turns out it was only six. But she was nice and let us sneak Maya in to sleep on the floor. A tight fit, but a roof, windows with bug screens, and electric light. We weren't complaining.

While the girls and Logan headed off to the pool Matt and Paige hit the internets while I ran down to the store to get quarters for laundry. Because, you know, you need clean clothes once in a while. Especially after a week on the road.

Once the laundry was started I grabbed my book and headed down to the water slide / pool area to read and watch the kids slide and swim. As I walked up to the water slide area I heard something along the lines of "whoah..bump bump...waaaaaahhhhh!!!!" and thought "I bet that's Maya." It was. I swear, that girl can hurt herself without moving, so when you combine running, a wet water slide mat, a hill and brambles you get one scraped up girl. I helped her back down the ramp, walked her over to the shower building, got her rinsed off, then sat with her as she soaked away the pain in the hot tub.

Eventually it got dark, the pools got closed, and we headed back to the Kabin for some Kamping. On the way back we could see some lightning in the distance, and hear thunder. And then we could hear something that sounded like thunder, but was way more sustained. More like, oh, a series of explosions. Well, I thought, it's getting close to the 4th of July...maybe people are setting off fireworks. Right? Wrong. One of the girls cleared up the mystery by saying that a kid at the pool said that she was going to Crazy Horse that night for the "Night Blast". It sounded like a doozy...we'd find out how "doozy" the next day.

Travelblog episode 6: Badlands, Wall Drug, and in to the Black Hills of Dakota

So, as I mentioned before, at 6 or so we pried ourselves out of the cars and assessed the damage. Our tent was definitely hosed, and went straight in the trash. The girls tent was hosed for now, but possibly fixable since the two broken poles were only broken in one segment. And better still, the tent itself seemed to have held together. So it was possible we'd only have to buy one tent. But since there were more storms in the forecast, and since other than Logan none of us had slept well, we decided to spend the night in a motel. And thanks to the fine folk at Expedia.com the Ramada Inn in Black Hawk, SD was the motel for us!

But first it was time to do some touristing. We headed back up in to the Badlands National Park, stopping to walk up to the "Door" and "Window" and take more pictures.

Cool rock formation...


Cool dried out mud...


Cool kids posing in the "door"


And some crazy cool Badlands!

Then we drove down through the park heading for Wall, where Matt introduced me to "You Look Nice Today" podcasts, which are high-larious and led to far too many exhaustion-enhanced fits of giggling. Which make it hard to drive, I hope you know.

Our next stop was in Wall. First at the Wall Dairy Queen for lunch, then on to Wall Drug for yet more craptastic Americana. I'd been to Wall Drug back in the '70s when I was a boy (and possibly the '80s as a teen), but I had no recollection of what a carnival of kitch the place is. Oh my God. They had it all. Well, all except replacement poles for tents. But they did have big bins of shiny rocks for kids to buy, and funky earrings for kids to buy, and post cards for kids to buy, and ice cream and pie for parents to buy for kids. And it was air conditioned, which is always a good thing.

After we were crapped out we got back on the road and rolled through Rapid City up to Black Hawk and the Ramada, checked in, then piled in the Commander and headed off to Mt. Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony. The ceremony, as I mentioned before, is both inspiring and cheesy, both patriotic and almost jingoistic (although I'm sure I'm using that word wrong...). But the mountain looks really cool with the lights on, as you can see from the photo:

Finally, we made our way down the mountain and back to Black Hawk where the boy's room fell asleep and slept soundly, while the girls' room was filled with snoring (from Paige) and sobbing (from Maya) and non-sleeping (from Megan and Maya, and Paige since they kept waking her up telling her not to snore). So our night of motel rest worked for half of us, but not so much for the other half. Ah well...