The Vacation Finale

These last few shots are just random ones from our South Dakota trip.
South Dakota is a great place to go if you are into dinosaurs or any other prehistoric animal. We went to The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs for a tour. They also to archeological digs with kids every day that we missed by 20 minutes. The kids were totally bummed.We passed through Deadwood, SD and took in a few of their Wild Bill Hickok reanactments. While waiting for one show to start, we taught the kids how to order from a bar. They ordered root beer and Eli learned how to flirt with the barmaid.It turns out that if you get the show early enough, they call you up from the audience and you get to part of the reenactment. Well, I got to play the part of riverboat Captain William Massie. It was a pretty easy role. All I had to do was play poker and pretend to get shot. Eli forgot that this was not real and had tears in his eyes when Wild Bill was shot and I ran off with a hurt hand. He got over it as soon as I came out and took a bow. Here I am with Wild Bill:One of the most beautiful parts of our trip was our drive through the Spearfish Canyon. We found a quiet place to camp, quiet as in not another soul around and had a fun night nestled in between the canyon walls. We woke in the morning and did a hike to the waterfalls then continued on our way up to North Dakota.We spent a couple of days exploring Teddy Roosevelt National Park (which is where the photo at the top of the blog was taken). Then we headed home with a brief stop at both of the grandparents. When I asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was they said, "all of it" but I think Eli narrowed it down to seeing buffalo and Sadie agreed. I think the best part was that the kids were awesome travelers and enjoyed camping, but thought the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park was a highlight because the kids were so entralled (afterall it took 2 and half hours to go 18 miles because we had to stop and look at everything!). Dennis loved when Eli got the meadowlark to sing and that he got to go on a long hike all by himself... Good times were had and we'll have memories to last a lifetime!