We went on our family vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Becky has a Yackley family reunion, so we were out there with all her sisters, brother, cousins and relatives. We traveled to Onida on Thursday night and headed to the Hills on Friday afternoon. We stopped into Pierre for lunch with Somer on our way out there.
It started raining as we were getting to Rapid City and because of the time change, we were there about 1:30 and couldn’t check in yet. We headed to the mall for a while to kill some time. I’m not sure if anyone shopped – I think someone did. I spent my time taking Amelia and Evia to the bathroom a bunch. They have a lot of fun together, so it was fun to chase them around the mall. Heather and family arrived and then we headed out to Bear Country since it’s a drive-thru zoo. Amelia fell asleep so didn’t get to see much of anything. We had Zach in our car, so we took him through the wolves and pumas until we got to the big bear section. I can’t believe how many bears are in there – something like 50. When you finally get through the bears, there’s a regular-type zoo at the end. Noah, Zach and Katie liked the different animals there – the highlight was the 14 baby bears who were wrestling and pooping and generally having a good time.
For dinner we decided to bring some food into the hotel so Becky could go hang out with the relatives and I could take the girls to the water park. We got our Olive Garden and hung out with the relatives for a little bit and then headed off to the park. The water park was smaller than some – it had a pretty decent size kiddie pool and then 2 slides for the bigger kids. Katie and I went down one of the big slides pretty early on – I couldn’t believe how crazy that slide was. You start slow but pick up a lot of steam and move around a lot. I almost fell on her. Of course, she loved it. For the next hour, it was up the stairs, down the slides and splashing into the pool. She and Noah were having a great time doing that. Amelia and I were taking some trips down the kiddie slides. She had fun, but resisted any effort to go down anything herself because she was afraid of getting water in her eyes. I finally convinced her to go down one with me holding her hand, but then I had to use my other hand to shield her eyes.
It had been raining most of the day, but we decided to attempt to go to Mt. Rushmore for the fireworks on the 3rd. We had heard stories that you have to be there by noon if you want to see the fireworks (which start at 9:20 pm), but in my best Clark Griswald mind, I thought we could leave the hotel at 9:00 and make the 25 minute drive in time to see the fireworks. Well, we burned rubber and got to Keystone about 9:22, but it was so cloudy we couldn’t see anything. Keystone was crawling with people – there were cars parked up to a mile outside of town. It looked like it would’ve been fun to hang out there, but Katie had fallen asleep so we couldn’t really go anywhere. Had it been a less cloudy night I could’ve taken another route into Keystone and probably seen the fireworks pretty well.
On Saturday we were scheduled to take part in the golf scramble starting at 8. Since Becky’s team was starting 6th and mine 8th, we figured we could get there kinda late, but we got a call at 8am wondering where the heck we were. We got there at 8:20 and waited around for an hour to play. I was with Laura, JJ and Mike and we had a good time. We didn’t play too well – we used too many of my shots, which means we got a lot of bogeys. On the 9th hole, I was offered $100 if I got hit Jason McQuirk with my shot, and I think I would’ve got him if he didn’t move. Katie and Amelia got to ride around with Grandma Nola in the beer cart and they had fun.
After golf we headed over to Storybook Island. The girls had fun there and wanted to take pictures on each different exhibit, so you’ll see some of those on the site. We headed back to the hotel and Becky took a nap while the girls and I hit the water park again. That night was the big dinner for the reunion, so we headed out for that and enjoyed the big buffet.
After dinner we hung around and played some bean bag toss while we waited for the fireworks to begin. We didn’t really get to see much of a show. We were supposed to be able to see the town’s fireworks from the south side of the hotel, and we saw lots of blasts, but we never saw what looked like a real show.
On Sunday we hit the reunion buffet breakfast, then headed for Keystone so we could get all the grandkids in an old West style picture. It was a great idea in theory, and the result turned out well. Trying to line up 9 kids 5 and under was like someone scratching their fingernails on a chalkboard. Somehow we got out of there in about an hour, and then Matt and Jess and we hung out and ate some pizza which was surprisingly decent. We went for a drive up Iron Mountain which was pretty cool, but the girls didn’t sleep too long, so we headed back towards town.
After that we met the family at Storybook Island again and the kids had fun with each other running through the maze and playing on the equipment. After that we headed back to the hotel for another round in the water park while Becky shopped. I talked the girls into going into the regular pool and we had fun in there. Amelia did a great job of swimming my herself (with her lifejacket) – I was quite impressed. We then hit the water park again and this time I summoned the courage to go down the slides again with my 5 year old daughter. They were still crazy, but I would race Katie to make sure I wouldn’t fall on her if we rode together. Becky was getting her hair done, so the girls and I made a late night gas and Qdoba run and then headed back to go to sleep.
On Monday morning we made our trip to Mt. Rushmore. We explained the Presidents to Katie enough times that I think she was starting to get it. Although she assumed that only one president was alive at a time (maybe like kings) and that since these 4 were dead, they all must be dead except Barack Obama. Anyway, they had fun checking out the flags and seeing the big mountain. Someone was repelling down Roosevelt’s face while we were there, but apparently we missed the Greenpeace demonstration this week by a couple days. Next we went to Reptile Gardens. I didn’t realize it was the biggest collection of reptiles anywhere in the world – a little more impressive than I would’ve guessed. They have an Inland Taipan there which is the most venomous snake in the world. Becky could’ve done without the snake part, but the crocodile show was pretty fun as the guy wrestled and fed the crocodiles. We saw the snake show too and now Katie gets specific when we play/talk about snakes and says they are Prairie Rattlesnakes. We climbed up Dinosaur park and then headed back towards Onida.
On our way back home on Tuesday we headed off without paying any attention to the weather, but by the time we got to Redfield everything looked really dark. We ended up driving into a huge rain/thunderstorm and I had my high wipers on for 70 miles straight with maybe 5-10 minutes of a break. When we got close to Watertown Somer called to tell us we might be heading into a tornado. So we stopped for longer than normal in the little town of Henry to wait out the storm. It passed by us pretty fast and we were able to make it home just fine.
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