South Dakota

After our exciting night of camping in a teepee.. we set off for Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota... This was one of our stops that was planned from the beginning, mostly because we simply felt we had to see it with the nature of our road trip. The ride through eastern Wyoming was less interesting than driving through the mountain scenery we had been.. but eventually we made it to the Black Hills of South Dakota. On the way to Rushmore we went by where the Crazy Horse Memorial is being carved out into a giant rock mountain, and we were perfectly content with saving $10 and getting pictures of his face (the only part that is currently distinguishable) from the highway. Then after about 6 hours we made it to Mt. Rushmore, where we did have to spend $10 to park because for some annoying reason our US National Parks pass isn't valid even though it is part of the National Parks family. We did enjoy seeing the monument and it was impressive to see how the faces were carved into the side of a mountain... but it is only somewhere that you need to spend about 20 mins. We continued on toward Badlands National Park a couple more hours down the highway where we were supposed to camp, but we actually ended up staying in a motel in Wall, SD down the street from the world famous "Wall Drug". (You can look it up if you don't believe us..)

The next day we were to set off on another 8 hour drive to Owatonna,MN... with a detour on the way to drive a long loop through Badlands National Park. The Badlands was very cool to see, and it was a park that we were just fine with driving through unlike some of the others we have been to that you really have to get out and hike or stay a couple of days to fully appreciate. Some of it reminded us of the parks in Utah, just not as tall. As we have come so far along in our trip we even talked about how we think it is pretty cool that we have seen so much and have the experience to compare one place to another... places that we didn't even know existed a month and a half ago.