Usual. Got up. Breakfast, pack a lunch, head out for the Badlands. Before we left, Trista and I packed some car games for the trip east. We started out with some camping related Mad Libs, and Levi tried to plug in something from Minecraft every chance he got. Trista did NOT want Minecraft answers, so she stopped asking Levi and asked me. As a mom, I am now in the middle of this debate and did my best to keep some answers minecraft-y enough to appease Levi, but not so minecraft-y as to upset Trista. Here is one of our masterpieces:
A Nature Hunt
The smell of pine 4-wheelers lets me know I am in the woods. I know I am on the right track when I hear sheeps singing in the trees. First on my list is to find a creeper track in the dirt. Nearby I hope to find a Minecraft that goes deep in the earth where the Chick-Fil-A lives. Next I look for a grumpy rock and a purple stick. After that, I search for giant different leaves. I always hope to find my favorite monster gathering jackalopes for its family to eat. To keep our environment healthy I look for 22 pieces of litter to throw away. A scavenger hunt is my favorite thing to do!
After a bit, she pulled out a Scattergories notebook that has a letter at the top of the page and then a list of things for us to come up with that started with said letter. For example, we are on page ‘F’ and it would ask for a sports team and we picked ‘Falcons’. Levi didn’t want to miss out of this game and he is perfectly capable of participating in this game, but since he has a one track mind these days, every time Trista would ask for something, regardless of the letter, Levi would call out, “MINECRAFT!”
About halfway to our destination, we stopped at a truck stop for a quick potty and drink stop. There is an attached restaurant and we parked closest to those doors. As we headed back to the car, I noticed one of the quarter machines was one of the ones with a chicken in the middle, surrounded by eggs and when you would put your quarter in and the chicken would cluck. I decided to give it a go for old time’s sake… I walked over to see that it now costs .50 (lame), but ok. I put my money in and what do you know the darn thing didn’t even cluck?!? Perhaps the LED lights should have been a clue, but at least it spit out… er… laid(?) two eggs! HA, HA, Mute Chicken! I got what I needed for the price I wanted after all!
Finally, we made It to the promised land… Wall Drug. (yeah, we did, because that’s what you do when you are in South Dakota). What. A. Mad. House. The good news, is that Trista and I had started playing the license plate game and this place just about gave me a blackout Bingo on my license plate map! It was pretty nuts, but we managed to get our squished pennies and I found an awesome geology book with 15 do-at-home science projects that looked pretty cool AND it was on clearance for $7.99 (down from like $30) so I guess we have our science curriculum for next year!
I suggested we make our way to the back yard where all the cool stuff is and as we approached the building out back we started to walk in and the giant T-Rex was doing his every 12 minute “feeding” there is smoke and lights and it roars and moves it’s head around, it is pretty cool, but Levi would have none of it! He ran out of that building so fast! It only lasts about a minute and then it goes dormant for the next 12 minutes. Keeping in mind this is at the end of a LONG building with at least 4 sets of double doors, we could NOT get Levi into that building, no way, no how. He wanted to play on the splashpad for a minute and we got our obligatory jackalope pictures and decided to head on out.
Ate lunch in a parking lot somewhere in Wall and then made our way over to the Badlands. From where we were in Wall, we were supposed to go straight and not get back on the freeway. However, we were one exit down from where we had gotten off the freeway and believed we needed to get on and go one more exit. Once we realized our mistake, we opted to keep going and run the Badlands loop in reverse, which would put us at the visitor center sooner. (this is relevant). So, we continue to where we had planned to end the Badlands and head home and make our way through that entrance. We pass a huge parking lot and decide that we want to start at the visitor center and backtrack if we have to. We go to the visitor center (most NPS visitor centers are closed, but you can get maps, Jr. Ranger packets, etc in tents set up outside). We head over to the tent and are gathering our stuff when all of a sudden, Trista says, “Hey!” to this little girl walking by… even without their vests, we recognized our well-traveled friends from the day before! We were so excited to see them again! This time we were prepared and exchanged information with them and we have been in touch. I hope that we will be able to spend some time with them again in the future and at the very least share tips and tricks from our travels!
Shoutout to the rangers at the Badlands for being AMAZING! They hooked us up with booklets for three different Junior Ranger programs and all the accompanying swag so we don’t have to go back to cash it in!
After that, we did backtrack to that parking lot so we could climb around on the rocks. There was a hike we wanted to do, but it was SO, SO hot (and today was forecast to be the coolest of our stay). We did a couple of short (very short) hikes and I can honestly tell you that I was much more concerned about heat stroke then Covid for most of the day. I made sure that all of us kept drinking LOTS of water.
The Badlands are pretty interesting in both their colors and their formations, it is very, very unusual terrain. There was one place where we stood and looked over this expanse of craggy, jagged landscape and John asked Levi if he could imagine what it must have been like for the pioneers to come across that area on horseback and wagons. Levi’s response was, “Well it is a good thing we are on the GOOD side of the BADlands!”
On our way home, we had the radio on. At one point they came on with a weather forecast talking about severe storms in the Black Hills and John and I really weren’t paying much attention, but apparently Levi was. Suddenly he asks, “What does severe mean?”
We answered.
Then he asked, “Where are we?”
“We are in the Black Hills.”
“Where is our RV??”
“In the Black Hills.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!! YOU PUT OUR RV IN A BAD SPOT.”
The rest of the drive and the rest of the drive home were unremarkable, at one point they were playing ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’, John and I sang along with the radio, while simultaneously hearing nothing but the same sentiments coming from the back seat! #parentlife
Oh! We did make a quick stop at the local grocery store to grab something to go with leftover hamburgers… I never have high hopes for little, small town grocers, but check this out:
Levi is sooo funny! I love it.