Day 3 - Badlands National Park

After two days of extensive driving we were finally in good shape to spend most of a day seeing some main sites. The first one was Badlands National Park. The park was only about 1.5 hours from our campsite, so it wasn't too bad of a drive to get to it. One thing that really stood out on this drive was how unbelievably massive some of the farms are out here. Off in the distance I saw some grain silos that we enormous. I took a couple pictures but they don't do a good job capturing just how big these things are. We made it to the park and stopped at the sign for a couple cliche pictures, stopped to pay our entry fee, and then headed inside.

The Badlands were pretty shocking to all of us. It is just a really beautiful and fascinating place that completely comes out of nowhere. For hours you are just driving through farm land and then out of nowhere there is this area with really unique geological formations. You would think there would be some build up to it and you would sense it's coming, but that doesn't happen.

Once we got into the park we stopped at a trail head right near the entrance. The park does a really good job of having these simple boardwalk trails that anyone can use, and then having options for people to step off them and hike on their own. We were able to take advantage of both of them.

After some hiking we went to the main visitor center. The visitor center was interesting because they had a lot of stuff on the history of the park, but it was very small. It was raining when we were there, so a lot of people used the time to go into the visitor center and it got very crowded inside. But there weren't that many people, it was just crowded because it was small.

After the visitor center we went to the Fossil Trail, which has fossils of the various animals which used to be in the area. Despite Sam's protests of pictures, she seemed to enjoy it.

The last thing we did was go for a hike on Notch Trail. The older two girls were disappointed that we hadn't done any "real hiking". My explanation of it being hard to do that with a baby and two year old fell on deaf ears. Fortunately the Notch Trail was the perfect amount of real hiking for our family. We did about a one mile out and back hike before leaving the park. It was a lot of fun as we took goofy pictures and laughed at Dad stepping into a big muddy puddle (after telling the girls not to).

After the hike we people were getting a bit tired, so we left the park and headed for the Wall Drug Store. When we got there Nolan and Sam were sleeping in the motorhome, so I walked over to it with Caroline, Natalie, and Julia. I will say that it is a unique and fun place, but I'm going to label this as an overrated attraction. I'm not saying I wouldn't go here again, but it was so heavily advertised that I was expecting something that would blow my mind, and that didn't happen. But again, it was interesting.

After Wall Drug we headed to the campground. This was a very tough drive for a few reasons. First, Nolan was getting very uncomfortable and fussy. His schedule has been way off the last few days, and you could tell he just wanted out of his seat. So he cried pretty hard for the last hour of the drive. This was also a tough drive to take in the motorhome. You are constantly climbing and descending steep mountain sides which are hard to do in an RV, and you are doing it all on winding roads. The reward for the tough driving was a quick sneak peek of Mount Rushmore that we caught before making it to the park. If Nolan hadn't been in such a fussy mood I would've pulled in to Mount Rushmore for the chance to see it twice, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.

We eventually made it to the campground which is the Mount Rushmore KOA Resort. It's an awesome campground. It's 5 miles from Mount Rushmore and right in the Black Hills, so it's beautiful around here. The campground has a ton of amenities, so tomorrow after checking out Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills we'll have to devote time to checking out the park.

Miscellaneous thoughts/notes:

• Allyson is the absolute perfect partner for this. Taking all these maniacs on a road trip like this is not easy, so hopefully this blog doesn't mislead anyone. There's been a lot of crying, some screaming, endless requests for snacks, and stress. But for the most part Allyson rolls with it. There is no way I could do this trip with anyone but her.

• My 9 year old daughter Caroline takes better pictures with my phone than I do. I don't understand it. I'm not a "good" picture taker, but I'm not bad. But somehow she knows how to use all the different modes and apply filters.....and she doesn't have a damn phone! I don't know if I should be impressed or concerned. She took the picture of Allyson and I above and the picture below:

• Before the trip I bought a tripod/selfie-stick/remote control combo thingy for my phone. It was $12 on amazon and is awesome. It has been used for many of the family pictures in this blog.

• If your computer tells you to upgrade to Windows 11 don't do it! I did it on the laptop I took on this trip and it has been nothing but trouble. Any website that needs to load an interface just routinely crashes. There are some proposed fixes online that suggest reloading Window 11 or reverting back to Windows 10. But with campground internet connections, and 5 kids running around that ain't happening. It has made this blog more challenging than I anticipated.

I have plenty more thoughts and comments to share, but that's all for today, maybe more tomorrow. Thanks for reading!