June 26th, 2002 : The Badlands National Park, Wall Drug, Mitchell Corn Palace and Mt. Rushmore
My beautiful daughters and I
This trip began planning itself the summer of 2001. My husband and I had visited Europe with some wonderful friends of ours and we realized how much of the US we hadn't seen. I was determined to take the girls to see things I had always wanted to see and that are considered some of our nation's historic spots. After 9/11, I decided I wasn't going to make it happen in the future, I was going to do it then. My family all thought I was nuts...taking three girls, across the country driving by myself. But, I had always been called the road warrior in the family and I was looking forward to it. I spent months planning how far I could drive in a day, what we would see, where I would stay, etc. Considering my youngest was six and my oldest was ten, it was quite the adventure, but they did great.
Remember, this was in the old days when vans didn't have DVD players and the kids didn't have electronic game players, music players or their own personal cellphones. What on earth did we they do with the time? We did travel in style though. My techie husband set us up with a computer in the van. A tower in between the two front seats and a monitor strapped on top of the folded down passenger seat with bungee cords. He installed a hard drive full of our music and we were ready to rock down the road. Unfortunately, for the most part bumps kind of messed up that old machine, so we rarely got a full song without some kind of hiccup. But, we knew a lot of songs by heart, so it was like when I was kid. You know...the cars didn't have air conditioning and so we drove everywhere with the windows down yelling and screaming the songs. Maybe that's why I'm deaf now? The kids favorite genre at that point was country music and Toby Keith's hit always made them sing along. They thought it was daring to sing, "I'll put a boot in your ..." Of course they didn't really sing "it", but it still made them giggle. Regardless of the silence in between bumps and reloading, the computer was awesome for looking up directions. Thank you map software. Only bad thing was, if we got off course, I had a 10 year old giving me street names to look for, because...you guessed it, we didn't have a GPS and definitely not wifi to look up anything.
Mitchell Corn Palace
We decided since I was driving with three young girls all by myself thousands of miles...the last thing I needed was a cellphone. We had never had one before...they were still pretty new. I was so excited to hear about this cool new deal that Cingular had that would allow me to call from anywhere in the country with no long distance charges. Amazing how much things have changed.
The first real stop of the day was the famous Mitchell Corn Palace. A tourist attraction for sure...but interesting. The building is actually made of corn husks and seeds.
The next stop was The Badlands National Park. We got there fairly early but it was almost July and it was hot.
The kids thought it was so hot they were pretending it was a pool.
They also looked for shady spots along the way. Hint: There aren't many.
But it was beautiful. We didn't have a great camera then, so the colors are not nearly as vibrant as in real life.
If you're traveling with no kids or can go off season, it would be nice to explore for hours. Check out the National Park's Website here.
Hey...there isn't much to do in South Dakota. Just kidding. It is a great place to bring small kids and again, a nice place for a cold drink and a meal.
Finally, we got to Mount Rushmore. It was a beautiful park and the center had some amazing movies about how the rocks were carved. Sadly, we got there a bit late in the day and the photos aren't the best.
Here is the link to the National Park site for Mt. Rushmore.
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