Welcome to T stands for Tuesday.

I’m going to warn you ahead of time… you better grab a fresh cuppa whatever you’re drinking today because I’ve got a lot of photos to share.

We traveled 1318 miles (2121 km), crossing two states, in 4 days. We spent a total of 25 hrs in the van. Remarkably there were no fights or bickering until we were within 5 miles of home.We saw numerous wind farms we saw along the way. This one is in SW Minnesota.Crossing the boarder in South Dakota. Kind of a boring sign if you ask me. We honestly almost missed it.Next stop Wall Drug. This is just one of hundreds and hundreds of signs along I-90.

Actually we made a couple of stops before Wall Drug, such as a drive by of the Corn Palace in Mitchell even though it is closed while some restoration is done on the domes.  At least we saw it.We ate a very late lunch in Wall. It was super busy since it was the week preceding the Sturgis Bike Rally. We had hoped that we’d miss all that traffic but they started showing up about a week early.This sign sort of said it all for the Wall Drug stop. Camp Disappointment. Too busy, poor service, and no paper in the restrooms…none. Lovely. But if in SD you have to stop at Wall! Just not near Bike Week. 🙂We finally made it to our home away from home. We were fortunate to have the other side of the duplex empty the entire time we were there.Little J and I fed the ducks early the next morning before we left for Mount Rushmore. Note my coffee cup on the picnic table.
Two days later we saw a sign on this side of the lake asking people NOT to feed the wildlife. Whoops.

After a hearty breakfast we were on to Rushmore… We ended up behind this motor home that had a long license plate such like one I associate with European countries. We lost track of it once before we even got through the gate.We saw plates from all over the country both here and on I-90. I’d estimate that we saw 3/4 of the states in the lower 48 and several Canadian Provinces in the 4 days were gone.

I’ve visited Mount Rushmore many times over the years but have never walked the Presidential trail before. We got so amazingly close. Again with so many bikes…we decided to skip stopping in the tourist trap area of Keystone. Later that same day we visited Cosmos Mystery Area, Dinosaur Park, Black Hills Caverns,  Chapel in the Hills and stopped for groceries. Whew! No wonder we were tired. Plus the kids and I went in the pool at the end of the day.

The next morning we decided to head to Custer State Park. As we entered rounded the bend towards the visitors center we encountered a bit of a road block.

About 200 or so bison were hanging out on and along the road. Males, females and calves all together. The bison were in rut.

This one was very interested in sniffing all the vehicles as they went by.

We took a 2 hour Jeep tour through the park seeing areas that aren’t accessible to the general public.

I think this was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. Our guide happened to be the lady who owned the tour company. She was amazing knowledgeable. We saw prairie dogs…

mountain blue birds…

and bighorn sheep.

After spending a lot more time than expected in Custer, we went to Rushmore Cave then back to our cabin for supper. We decided to explore the park that was on the other side of the lake  until it was nearly dark. It was a beautiful evening.

In the morning we packed up to head for home via the Badlands.

There really isn’t a bad view in this whole park. Now why in the world would I show you this… Well, there is a story to this photo.  As we walked to the end of this overlook Mr. G had mentioned that he thought these raised boardwalks would be a perfect place for rattlesnakes to rest in the shade. As we got about half way back we heard the telltale rattle. The kids were gone like a shot and wouldn’t get back out of the van for the next few stops.  We finally got them to emerge for a final little trek. Little J would go past the sign that said beware of rattlesnakes. I have to admit I wasn’t terribly excited about doing that either after hearing one. Blech…gives me goose bumps just thinking about it again.

I hope I didn’t bore you with our road trip photos.  We took about 900 photos with our 2 cameras plus a few videos.

Sorry that I never made it around to anyone last week….we were too busy traveling. I had my post scheduled and was able to use some wifi long enough to link up at Elizabeth’s blog.