Well, as you can see from the title of this post, day two of our trip was a busy one!
After loading up the car, we remade our cabin a bit so that we could take some pics of the room before leaving. This is life traveling with a travel agent. After that, we spent the first half of the day continuing to tour around the Badlands, which really are beautiful. Aside from taking hundreds of pictures of rocks, we saw some wildlife including deer, big horn sheep and, everyone’s favorite, the prairie dogs.
Once we left the Badlands, we traveled to town of Wall where we visited the famous Wall Drug Store. As roadside attractions go, Wall was a fun one. We enjoyed a quick lunch, awesome homemade donuts and then we hit I-90 and headed for Keystone, SD. In Jeremy’s opinion, besides the beautiful scenery, the 80 mph speed limit on I-90 is a site to behold.
Just into Keystone, we headed to Big Thunder Mountain Gold Mine where we crossed off one of the attractions Josh requested for this trip. We went deep into an actual mine, learning the history, and then the kids got to pan for gold. The Minecraft fan among us was pleased.
Our pockets loaded with substantial amounts of gold and gold-like rocks, we headed on up to Mount Rushmore. A visit here is one for the bucket list. We took in the movie in the visitor’s center, we took in some ice cream, we hiked the President’s Trail and then we headed back into Keystone for some dinner. We enjoyed pizza on Keystone’s Boardwalk at a place called Jane’s, which was recommended by our gold mine tour guide. The plan was to head back out to Mount Rushmore for the evening lighting ceremony after dinner, but mother nature had a different idea. Rather than brave a thunderstorm, we chose to head to Custer and check-in at our next hotel.
Upon arrival at the hotel, the kids begged to get into the pool, but we opted to get them through the shower and off to bed. What is it with kids and hotel pools? We have to beg them to get into the one at home, but for some reason the opportunity to swim in an over-chlorinated pool jammed full of other screaming kids is one that they’re loathe to miss.
