Camping, History, Parks

A Fort, White Sand, and Sand burs.

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After Wind Cave we headed south to Fort Robinson, all of the buildings were closed but we still enjoyed walking around and reading the history of the place.

We had learned while at the Crazy Horse Monument that this is where he was killed.

This place has a lot of sad history including being a POW camp during WW2.

That being said it was a beautiful place to camp for the night and the wildlife loop was pretty.

The horses (I think they belong to the fort) surrounded our vehicle and even stuck their noses in!

There were actually a lot of trails and I would not mind going back to this area to check out more of it.

The next day we continued our journey south and stopped at Lake McConaughy.

As we got closer I realized there were a lot of campgrounds around the lake and I started panicking on picking the right one.

I ended up choosing the one where all the sand burs go to party.

Do not walk on the grass was our mantra the whole time.

Our poor dog made that mistake several times.

I was pretty sure this was the fail of the trip, it happens. They can’t all be winners.

It was windy and the sand would get in your eyes, the vault toilet was not super clean, sand burs were everywhere and on everything, and it cost more than most of our stops.

It was pretty though.

And than we went to Kansas…

Animals, Camping, History, National Forest

Crazy Horse and Wind Cave

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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.

Camping, Hiking, National Forest, National Memorial

The Black Hills of South Dakota

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Thankfully the rest of our trip was not as bumpy as the first part.

Not smooth but definitely not crazy.

We left the Badlands and promptly needed to find somewhere to dump our black tanks. We were dry camping (no water in tanks) but using the bathroom when needed and the last spot had no other bathroom.

Seven people for three days is apparently the max with no other bathroom choice.

And we needed a new tongue jack.

Thankfully we were able to find a place for both of those before heading into the Black Hills.

We stayed at a National Forest Campground and it was beautiful!

And most importantly had a bathroom (just a vault toilet, most places did not have water on).

Tons of wildlife, a lake, and near these guys…

I did not even have to bribe them to get these smiles!

They were surprisingly excited about seeing Mount Rushmore!

I quickly realized that this was a one stop place though. We did everything including watching all the movies on the making of (my daughters favorite part, they loved feeling like they were in a theater, something I avoid doing with them normally) in one visit.

So the next day we did the Little Devil’s Tower hike in Custer State Park.

I thought my kids would like the possible climbing part and foolishly thought I could do “the easy part” and wait for them.

Instead I tried to kill myself to get pictures of the beautiful views.

I stopped to “enjoy” the view often because I could not breathe though.

It started going uphill and then it ended in a scramble to the top.

And I did it because I wanted the shot!

I will forgive all the rest of my family for saying they were not really sore the next day when I could not use my arms or legs without groaning in pain.

This kid in the above pic was the worst, flew up like it was no problem.

But then on the way back down to the vehicle he asked if he could go ahead, I confirmed that he knew the way, reminded myself that he is growing up and said okay stay within hearing.

I did not think much more of it until we were almost back to the vehicle and he runs up from BEHIND us…

I thought he was in the front.

He said he took a wrong turn and had to run to catch up!

Never going to trust the whole he is getting older thing again.

Lies!

He will hold my hand from now on.