Adventure to the Black Hills

I was born right next to the Black Hills, in Newcastle. My family spent a lot of time driving through those hills, back and forth on those switchbacks, though most of what I remember was not feeling so great in the back seat. And sleeping in the back of the blue station wagon we drove.

I thought it was time my son saw that part of the country. It’s so beautiful. So we loaded up and went for a road trip.

We had to make a stop at 220 West Road, my first address, and the place I met his dad for the first time. It hadn’t changed very much at all. It was a small house. But, the saying “love grows best in little places” rang true for our family there. We only spent a few minutes in town and headed off to Jewel Cave in the hills. (Which, according to my son, wasn’t very jewel-y, but it was a HUGE cave we got to spend a bit of time traipsing through, up and down over 700 stairs.) From there we headed to Rushmore. Which, if you ask any of us, our favorite part of that was the mountain goats standing at the bottom. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mt. Rushmore, but I’ve never seen a Mountain Goat up close. A wild one anyway.

We stayed in Rapid City, at the hotel connected to and awesome indoor water park. (The Fairfield) I would recommend it to anyone with kids passing through the area. We had a blast there. We were also able to meet up with some our family that had just happened to be in the area as well, that was a great surprise.

The next day, we visited Art Alley. LOVED it. I love that the city has allowed the public to just take over something like that. Then we were off to reptile gardens. If you ask anybody who visited reptile gardens when they were a child, they will tell you about how they got to ride the giant turtles. I am no exception to that. I rode those turtles and so did my husband. And if he had to guess, they are the same turtles that are still there (given that one of them is 109 years old.  (But that has changed, kids can no longer ride.) We visited the cosmos, and then drove through Custer State Park, and ended the day at Evan’s Springs swimming. Everything was pretty much as I remembered. It was wonderful to be able to share that with my son.

Our last day we made a stop at Devils tower before staying the night in Buffalo and then heading to Thermopolis for Easter (where my kiddo was the official pancake flipper for the breakfast at the church.) We made our way back home and stopped to see all the grandparents along the way.

I hope we made some new awesome memories for my little Dino Dude. Road trips are always exhausting, but they say that they aren’t measured in miles, but in moments.