South Dakota!

One of the tunnels we went through in Custer National Park.

After 2.5 days with ZERO internet access, I feel like I have so much to catch up on! I mean, Michael Strahan isn’t getting married to Eddie Murphy’s old wife anymore. Richmond is apparently getting at least two new ridiculous restaurants and it turns out it is August! In all seriousness, what in the world did we do before the Internet. We literally haven’t been able to get online for the past few days while at Mt. Rushmore (when a campground tells you they have WiFi, it’s a lie) and I couldn’t count the number of times that we mindlessly reached for our phones or ipad’s to look up some sort of information. I mean, we had to use a map. Craziness.

We never ended up making it into Billings for breakfast that morning. Shawn went on a run and explored the downtown and decided we weren’t missing much so we might as well get moving. That was a good decision because we spent another 7 hours in the RV that day. Macy spent the whole ride with Mamaw and Papaw since they had one night left with us and we had the boys. Jude actually napped for the last FOUR HOURS of the drive, so I have to report that the drive wasn’t bad at all! Luke is excellent at imaginary play and can easily entertain himself for hours. God bless him. But the kid can talk (clearly my genes) and he asks the most random, hilarious and thoughtful questions. “Does God eat bugs?” “Would I need to wear wong pants if I wode on a bird?” “Jude, can I take your shoes off and smell your feet?” “Does God toot?” “Mom, did you know you grow big at night when you sweep? Das why I need to sweep awot.” “Can God see inside our bus?” “Can I put on my Buzz Light Year outfit when I get back to wichmond?” “Mom, we need to trade this baby for a new baby.” I love 4 year olds.

On our final climb up the mountain to Mt. Rushmore, we saw bright yellow signs warning of narrow, unpaved roads and no shoulder ahead. That was all I needed so I unbuckled my seat belt and went and sat on the floor underneath the dining table and read my meathead Oxygen magazine I brought but hadn’t opened yet. Thankfully Shawn didn’t utter a word about what he was seeing and I was eventually able to resume my spot up front. We got settled into the massive campground that is the Mt. Rushmore KOA, but not before my in-laws had to have yet another tree trimmed before they could park. Remember when I was saying how beautiful their motorhome is? I am not sure if I mentioned how mammoth it is. They cannot go on any roads that big 18 wheelers can’t go on. So more than once we have had to get the campground maintenance crew to come out and cut down some limbs. We ate dinner at the campground restaurant and called it a night.

The next morning Shawn’s parents left early to see Mt. Rushmore since they had to pull out by 11, so Macy ended up seeing it twice since she hopped in their jeep to soak up the last minutes with her grandparents. When they returned we all said our goodbye’s and Macy and Mamaw did an okay job of fighting back the tears. (Good thing Shawn had sunglasses on so no one could see his. J) We ate some lunch and loaded up the kids (at the worst possible time of day) and headed out to Mt. Rushmore. It was so surreal to see it in person. It really is something spectacular and the story behind it is just as impressive. (I will spare you the details but you should try to go and/or at least read the story!) The whole place is so well done in terms of the exhibits, artifacts, stories, etc. They even have a Tom Brokaw narrated movie that plays in two theaters every 20 minutes. We gave Jude a chance to sit and watch but having never been to the movies before and also only having one octave (loud), we left and Macy and Luke sat with Shawn and apparently watched intently. We rewarded them with some ice cream on the way out. We were barely out of the park before Jude was passed out in his car seat so we decided to drive through nearby Custer State Park and look for animals. We got on the “must see” Needles Eye Highway (according to the pamphlet from the campground – no internet, remember?). Well, animals were NOT what we got when we paid our $15 park entrance fee. We were deep in mountains made of stone. Literally. It was absolutely amazing.( I failed to mention earlier that this weekend was the start of the annual Sturgis biker rally, which is pretty much the largest biker rally in the US each year. We easily saw thousands of bikers, many of whom were staying at our campground. Jude was in heaven – that kid loves motorcycles!) The roads were narrow and there were a ton of “tunnels” which were literally holes in the rock that I guess they just built the road right through. You would have to sneak up slowly to the entrance because like a good bar in downtown Richmond in the 90’s, it was ‘one in – one out’. I am glad we have nothing bigger than a Tahoe! Poor Macy was getting car sick from all of the zig zagging so we turned around but those 45 minutes were worth every penny. We took a huge risk and stopped at a nice looking lodge restaurant for dinner with the kids on the way down the mountain. Other than Jude having peed through his clothes and having to dine in them, it wasn’t too bad. We both had Bison and man is that good stuff.

This morning we promised the kids that we would take them down the lone water slide at the campground before pulling out. The slide didn’t open until 10 and we were a little early so we headed to the pool. I have a hard time even calling it a pool as it was more like a nasty, green, bug infested swamp. Thankfully it was too cold for the kids. Sadly they then spotted the “hot tub” which somehow managed to be even more disgusting than the pool. We all only put our feet in as I could hear my mom’s voice telling me there was some sort of disease we could get from that hot tub, so we decided to check to see if the slide was open. It was and I am not kidding when I say the water was FREEZING (and just as gross looking). It was already on the chilly side and overcast this morning, but we promised. All 3 were big enough to go down the slide so Shawn rode with Luke (you rode on a mat) and me with Jude and even though their lips were purple, we went down as many times as we could until we had to go get ready to leave.

We got in the RV not even really knowing where we were going today since we couldn’t get online to plan anything. To make a long story short, we have ended up only going 90 miles to the Badlands. We may never make it to this part of the country again so we might as well go now. It will take us at least 5+ hours to get across South Dakota so we aren’t helping ourselves by making such a short trek, but we heard it’s worth it! We are about 15 minutes away and the topography (there’s that word again!) has already done a 180 and there are literally what looks like mountains of sand surrounding us outside of our RV. We are truly in the middle of nowhere. But I do get to add another state to my list! I once counted that I had been to 36 states with Snagajob, but Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota were not on that list – so cool to get to add them!