Road Trip-South Dakota on the Olympus

OK, since I'm working backwards, and with pics from two different cameras, these posts are probably all over the place. This is my first post of our trip. Bear(?) with me. These pice are of our leg through South Dakota. We left Chicago on Sunday morning, and drove to the western edge of MN, so we got into South Dakota Monday morning.

Our first stop in SD was Mitchell, home of the Corn Palace. More pics on another post....We stopped at the Corn Palace, and a few souvenier shops. We also ate at a cute little coffee shop, where I traded jewelry for our meal. Great to meet you Vonda and Laura!!!

On to the Badlands National Park. Nobody wanted to get out of the car but me, so we kind of just powered through. The Badlands reminded me of The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The grasses or whatever was blooming smelled SO good, and I envied all the bikers riding through the wonderful smells.

I was remeinded of the Indian Wars that went on here and thought about the people that called this land home as we drove through.

Towards the end of the badlands National Park, there were a bunch of cars pulled over on the side of the road, and I wondered why, there was nothing! A closer look revealed a prairie dog town! The boys were willing to get out of the car to check that out :-) We watched as a badger came sauntering through, and all the prairie dogs started talking to each other....Very cool. One of our favorite moments of the trip.

As it happens, the Badlands Loop ends up right in Wall, SD, home of WALL DRUG. We were in no mood for a souvenier shop fest, but ran through right quick anyway and made a couple purchases :-)

This is the downtown area of Wall. We also checked out a wax museum while we were there. We spent the night In Rapid City, at a Hotel with a water park. The boys were in heaven and had a blast!

Spent the morning waterparking, then...........

Next stop, yeah, you guessed it Mt Rushmore! This is a shot after we left the park, from the side. I had more pics on the D70. Again, noone wanted to get out and take a little hike, but I managed to stop at a trail to get a cool rock ;-)

This is Crazy Horse, another favorite stop we made. All the heads of Mt Rushmore can fit into the space behind Crazy Horse's head. Amazing! We saw a little movie about the making of Crazy Horse, which was very impressive.

We wanted to tour a cave after Crazy Horse, but the scheduling wasn't right, and the boys were tired and crabby, so we drove through Wyoming, and ended up spending the night in Ft.Collins, CO.

So, This should be ending up at home, since in the blogging order it's at the end, but oh well. Kind of Naked Lunchish....