Road Trip Day Two: Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, Rapid City

After a hot breakfast at the Wrangler Cafe, we set off to Mount Rushmore. We took the scenic route through Custer State Park. We made a quick stop at Sylvan Lake. It was beautiful and the kids loved that they could see tiny fish swimming the water. Then we headed up along Needles Highway. It was cool to drive through the little tunnels (emphasis on the word little) cut right into the rock. I was glad we weren’t in anything bigger than a minivan. We drove along the Wildlife Loop and saw a few buffalo, a marmot, some burros, a pronghorn, and a couple of antelope. The coolest part of the park was Iron Mountain Road. They planned the road just right so that the tunnels perfectly frame Mount Rushmore in the distance. It was neat to see the monument from that perspective and it made me appreciate how big it really is when we were up close.






Our plans for the day shifted a few times. Keri and her kids were visiting the mainland and Adam (her 10 year old) really wanted to go to Mount Rushmore. Since she gets free flights and they were heading to Utah from Oklahoma, they were hoping to hop a flight into Rapid City and meet up with us in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t in the cards. They didn’t get on the morning flight and their later flight had a 5 hour mechanical delay. Since we were planning on seeing the monument with the Blackburns later in the day, we just stopped by for a quick family picture while the weather was nice. Abby fell and skinned her knees while we were walking up to the monument and I got blood all over my shirt when I picked her up to hug her. Fun times. Plus, it was sunny and we had left both things of sunblock at the hotel. So, we took a couple of pictures and headed up to Rapid City so we could fuel up, pick up some essentials at Walmart, and get lunch.


One of my friends had told me about a park in Rapid City that was one of the highlights of their trip when they were in the area. I thought it would be fun to check it out. Road trip lesson of the day: Just because someone raves about an attraction doesn’t mean that your family will actually like it. We learned that with both the Wildlife Loop (highly recommended by the hotel owner) and Storybook Island Park (recommended by my friend). Both were a bit underwhelming. The park had some fun things to see, but not much to do. The most exciting thing was a merry-go-round. The kids weren’t actually supposed to ride it (it was in the “under 5 only” section of the park), but we let them anyway. Ben was sitting on the top of one of the cars when Nate started to push them and he did a quality flip off the side. He didn’t get hurt and it was pretty funny to watch.



Keri texted while we were at the park to say that after hours of waiting they had ditched their plans and were just flying straight to Idaho. We decided to head back to the hotel and let the kids swim for a while and then just go back to Mount Rushmore for the lighting ceremony. The weather was a bit crazy all day changing from sunny and warm to overcast and cool every fifteen minutes. It started raining/hailing while we were at the pool and by the time we left for Mount Rushmore, it was a full-fledged thunderstorm. It was cool to watch and listen to, but it made for some pretty scary driving. When we got back to Mount Rushmore, everyone was leaving. The lightning was so close that we were a little afraid to walk from the parking lot to the visitor center. We waited a while for the storm to die down a bit, put on every jacket we had in the car (we should have thrown them all in before we left the hotel), and then made a run for it. Once we were in the visitor center, it was smooth sailing. We watched the 14 minute movie about the monument and checked out all of the exhibits. We learned a lot of really interesting stuff. Everything worked out great: The lightning moved far enough away that they didn’t cancel the night program; we picked up a few plastic bags in the gift shop to cover the benches so our butts wouldn’t get wet; and, because of the rain, we didn’t have to contend with a huge crowd.


I got a little emotional a couple of times while we were at the visitor center and during the lighting ceremony. The “we hold these truths to be self-evident . . .” part of the Declaration of Independence gets me every time, as does singing the national anthem in big groups. Luckily there was enough comic relief during the lighting ceremony to keep me from getting too choked up. The ranger who led the program graduated from the Glenn Beck School of Voice Inflection and for some reason I found that extremely humorous. Then there was Girl Scout Troop 12,560 from the International School in Wisconsin that did the flag ceremony. When they went up to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the program, I was super impressed and told Ben that we need to work on doing better flag ceremonies with our cub scouts. Retiring the flag at the end of the program was a different story. One of the girls played taps on her trumpet. It was barely recognizable and almost painful to listen to. Then it took a good five minutes for them to fold the flag. We could hear them doing the calls “right hand, fold, fold, fold, unfold” over and over again. Every time I heard the “unfold” I had to stifle my laughter. Good for them for wanting to get it just right, but I was so relieved when one of their leaders finally walked up and told them to just finish folding it and call it good.


It was a late night and Elise fell asleep on the way back to Custer. Our poor kids went from having a strict 8:30 bedtime to having a mom and dad that kept them out at all hours of the night. Abby had fallen asleep earlier in the day when we were driving back from Rapid City. I stayed in the car with her so she could sleep while Nate took the other kids to the pool. After about 45 minutes I woke her up so she wouldn’t entirely miss getting to swim. She was sad that everyone else got to swim longer so Nate said that she could stay in the pool with him after everyone else left. They really only stayed for an extra ten minutes, but in her mind it made everything fair. After that when we would ask the kids what their favorite part of the trip was she would say “Staying at the pool with Dad all by myself.” That extra ten minutes made her feel like she was the queen of the world.