Mount Rushmore National Memorial

    We started our day by heading to Mount Rushmore. A mere 18 miles from our current location. We drove up and out of the prairie into the beautiful Black Hill mountains. I'll be impressed if we see prettier mountains anywhere else. Unfortunately, everyone else in the country had the same idea about going to Mount Rushmore over the holiday weekend.

    We had bumper to bumper traffic as we approached the National Monument and it took us two hours to travel those 18 miles which really messed with our schedule. The faces of the four presidents were visible from a good distance away and we kept joking that we should turn around since we saw it well enough. But we persisted, and finally made it to the parking lot. Apparently, the parking is run by a private company so our parks pass wasn't accepted and I had to pay for the honor of using their lot. So that put me in a sour mood. And there were huge crowds and merchandising surrounding the whole place. Riley suggested that we come back during the winter so it would be better. But the mountain was still impressive and its a really cool piece of work.

    We jumped in the car and made our escape to the Black Hills National Forest were we stopped for lunch. The kids had fun running through the woods and finding all sorts of shiny rocks to collect. I even found my first new bird species when a big flock of red crossbills made a sweep of the trees we were eating under.

    Our next destination was Wind Cave National Park. We saw more prairie dog towns as we entered and made our way to the visitor center where we signed up for a tour. We descended into the cave with a ranger-led group and the kids got to experience something just a tad bigger than the ice caves back home. We did a half-mile underground and Emma loved seeing all of the formations as we went along. But it's tough for me to be impressed by a cave after being in Carlsbad Caverns. I'll have to take them there one day.

The highlight of the park for the kids though was a little bunny that seemed nonplussed by them and just ate some grass as they cooed over it. We crossed over into Wyoming for the night and got to see an impressive thunderstorm in the distance as we drove. Our next stop is Devils Tower National Monument and then up to North Dakota for Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Lightning Bolt!