Category Archives: Animals

Crazy Horse and Wind Cave

After double checking that we had ALL of our children, we went to the Crazy Horse Memorial.

I was not sure how interesting it would be but it was pretty facinating!

I would totally recommend going and learning this important part of American history.

The next day we moved to Wind Cave National Park.

It was a beautiful campground for a wonderful price.

Again no water (which we expected) and only vault toilets.

Something I had not expected was the mountain lion warning on the bathroom doors and my youngest deciding that meant they were seen in the bathrooms.

She would not step one toe outside without an adult right next to her, sure that the mountain lion was lying in wait.

My twins concern was our dog.

They did not want him sleeping in the tent, never mind their brothers were in the same tent…

But even though I acted like it was no big deal, him being in the tent with them made me feel better so he was staying.

Ha

I thought the cave tour was interesting but you did not see much of the cave at all.

I finally took the plunge and washed my hair outside with water I warmed up on the stove.

It worked fine and I felt like I had earned a camping merit badge or something 😉

I bought bath wipes also from Amazon that work great when you can’t shower.

We did see a lot of animals while driving around here but no mountain lions thankfully.

Driving around in the evenings, looking for wildlife was one of my favorite parts of this trip.

Kansas City Zoo and a castle

If I did it again I would have gone into the Dutch Bakery and Bulk food store! Nick went in with one kid while I sat in the vehicle with the rest but I found out later it is a great place to stock up! The weather was pretty perfect except for a thunderstorm on our last night and we got to see Koalas so I feel like the trip was a success. Even though one of my children might have stopped sleeping and flip flopped all night instead which rocks the camper all night… I love the camper but also having a house that stays still is nice.

Scenic Drives and Sand Dunes ~Freedom, OK

Since Alabaster Caverns is a pretty small park and I love western Oklahoma, we decided to drive around while there couple of times.

I have a scenic drive map for Oklahoma that we used as a starting off point and it was great!

Not the part where I tried to take us to a WMA after a lot of snow and we almost got stuck…

But everything else was great!

At one point I wondered why I thought trapping 6 kids in a vehicle with me would be relaxing and questioned my vacation choices but then we saw a BOBCAT!!!!

I joked with the kids that I would pay them a dollar for finding me a bobcat since I had never seen one in the wild and I ended up finding one! That made the loud car ride totally worth it! That and lots of beautiful wide open spaces! Right after we saw the bobcat we then saw a badger! Poor guy was terrified, ran to this whole, and began frantically throwing dirt out to get away from us…I get that. We are loud. We also decided to stop by the Little Sahara State Park one day. The kids were not sure about another ride to go see something but ended up loving running down the dunes. You can rent Off Road Vehicles to go out on the main part of the dunes but that is a bit pricey so we stuck to the nature trail and viewing area. The viewing platform is pretty far removed from the main part of the park so can be hard to find but it is worth it. Watching the sand blow off the tops of the dunes was mesmerizing.