Not quite going to plan

We got on the road from Gillette “the best a man can get” with the idea that we would go to Spearfish for the night. We asked the kids if they would be happy to go another hour and get to Rapid City and have Sam’s Club pizza for dinner, which was a resounding yes! Only it didn’t happen! We boosted to get there on time but apparently they run out of pizzas! Even worse, because we went through Spearfish we missed the opportunity to go to where Dances with Wolves was filmed and where Kevin has a museum etc.. I was informed it was only me missing out on that one!

The next day was going to be better, after staying the night at Sam’s Club we headed down to Windcave National Park..,. unfortunately the cave is closed due to a new elevator being put in. We had a talk from Adrian (Coyote Boy) about the origins of the Lakota people and the kids got photos with a Cybertruck in lieu of going caving.

Katie wants one, but they only come in five seats.

So we drove through Custer State park to see some animals and do the Junior Naturalist program only to find that we had run out of time to do all the activities for the girls to get their badges and would have to come back another day. It was not working out well!

So we headed up towards Mount Rushmore hoping to see the faces lit up at night. It was not looking good as the fog had been setting in all day and there was nothing to see. We decided to stay the night in a pullout just out of the National Park area and hope for clear skies the next day and it paid off! This morning we could actually see the trees…..and more.

We got some great views of the presidents and as we left they were completely clouded over again. We drove around to Crazy Horse and got a good view of him too. Crazy Horse is still being chipped away at after 75 years and still has a long way to go but will be very impressive when done.

So Today was going well, we even went back to Custer and the girls finished their programs and got their patches and we even got back to Rapid City and got pizza from Sam’s club!