Thursday, June 15:
We woke up at the KOA and headed for the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. We then headed to the Badlands which were beautiful!! Amazing area, we loved it. We did two hikes- one to the Narrows and one to Deer Haven. Deer Haven was much longer, very dusty and hot. Sven found 2 wood ticks on him. We continued driving to Keystone, SD and got a hotel room. That night, we drove up to see Mt. Rushmore and the evening program- it was Spectacular!! Our hotel room was disappointing- dirty and gross (and the most expensive of the trip thus far)
Friday, June 16th:
The breakfast at this place is comical- worse than the room if that is even possible. Eggs served in square blocks, warm cartons of milk and not much else that even resembled food. Kinda scary. And here we booked this place on line because we were excited it included breakfast. Ha!
While we were packing up, Svea got stung by a bee on her pinky finger. This was her first ever bee sting, so we waited patiently to see if she'd have any physical reactions. No reaction- yeah!! After some ice and minor first aid applied and we were off...Svea is so tough!!
Swollen finger and all, we all headed out moutain biking in Rockford, SD. We had a great ride and then....Stephanie's bike broke. Ugh, the hub too! The worst possible scenerio. She was able to ride but the bike is making a horrible noise. After the ride, we headed toward Custer State Park and drove the famous Needles highway and part of the wild animal highway. It was amazing! We saw beautiful rock formations and two bison. We then went to Wind Cave National Park. We went on one of the Wind Cave tours, about 1.5 hours and 350 ft. underground. It was really neat and Sven was terrified the entire time. (he hates being underground)
We started driving toward Ft. Collins, CO. and late that evening passed into WY and drove until we were tired. We were lucky to stumble down a road that led us to a State Park. We thought the road would lead us to a bit more of a deserted place to sleep on the side of the road. Instead, we drove right into a campground near a large reservoir. We pulled in late (well after dark) and left first thing in the am. We did not pay- thanks Wyoming state parks!!
