Road Trip to South Dakota - Day 3

Keegan woke us up at 6 am again to eat. After a quick feeding he went back to sleep. Lyle and I got up around 8:30am. While I got dressed and ready; Lyle started making french toast for all of us. Cate, Chris, Lyle, and I ate french toast together. Shortly after Keegan woke up and I fed him. We all discussed what we were going to do today. It was decided that since it was supposed to rain the next day that we would save taking the Wind Cave tour for tomorrow. Tops for the agenda today was seeing Mount Rushmore. Second most important was going to Hot Spring to see the Mammoth site.

We all got into the car to go to Mount Rushmore. When we got there Keegan was strapped in his backpack and hoisted onto Lyle's back. Mount Rushmore was very nice; it was very impressive after the disappointment of Crazy Horse. It's a very beautiful site. As we walked down the promenade bordered by flags of the various states; we heard that a tour would be starting in 5 minutes. So we decided to join the tour. The tour went along presidents trail snaking around the amphitheater and beneath the carving. Mount Rushmore was different than all of us expected. The carving was higher up and further away than any of us thought it was going to be; it also looked smaller.

As we had found was the trend; Keegan got very restless when we stopped moving to listen about the history behind Mount Rushmore. Between bouts of blowing my horribly stuffy nose, I whispered to Lyle that if he put the backpack down I would take Keegan out and let him play a little. The tour moved very slowly; so Keegan and I "walked" behind the group. Occasionally I let him crawl along the paved trail. He was having a blast and keep giving people these huge grins. He made quit a few friends during the tour.

We all enjoyed the walk and the tour. The tour took a very reasonable 30 minutes and afterwards we wandered around the gift shop. I was hungry and convinced everyone we should check out the cafeteria. The general consensus was pizza for lunch would be nummy. After a quick perusal of the cafeteria and a potty stop we decided to get lunch in Keystone. Keegan needed a quick diaper change in the car before we were off.

Lyle had seen a pizza place across from the Keystone Mall. I think calling it a mall was a bit of a stretch. It was maybe seven or eight touristy type shops in a row with a somewhat western theme to the building architecture. We found out shortly after parking, that most of these shops were closed for the season. So we ended up at a different pizza shop in the Mall. Oddly enough the pizza place was run by a middle eastern family; it was odd because so far this part of South Dakota had been predominately non-ethnic. The pizza was nothing special but it was pizza. Keegan ate a bottle with some prodding and we paid. Then back into the car and off to Hot Springs.

We found the Mammoth Site without much trouble. On the way to Hot Springs Keegan and I both fell asleep in the car. Cate and Chris sat in the back looking over maps and information on the area. Once at Mammoth Site Lyle went to purchase tickets for us all and I perused the shop. I bought Keegan a small stuffed mammoth that he liked a lot and a small t-shirt that said something mammothly funny on it. We went in to watch the pre-tour video. Keegan was in his stroller and decided that he didn't really want to be in his stroller. He was getting tired and crabby. So him and I left the video and went to walk around some. When the tour started we fell in with the rest of the group. Shortly after we entered the mammoth site Lyle and I realized there was going to be a lot of standing and not much moving; not an ideal situation with Keegan.

Lyle took Keegan out of the stroller and put Keegan on his shoulders. This had Keegan giggling gleefully and loudly. The tour guide had us listen to her through phones that were propped over the railing that was around the mammoth site. It was cool to see all of the mammoth bones. The tour guide was unimpressive though; she was maybe 15 and kept describing the mammoths as "like, really cool" not the kind of tour I was expecting. Maybe I am just getting old. But hearing about how mammoths thought the water hole was "like just awesome" was just weird. Needless to say Lyle and I stopped listening to her and tried to keep Keegan busy. After Keegan got bored of riding on Lyle's shoulders Lyle let him down to hang onto the chain link that enclosed the area. Keegan happily stood there holding onto the chain link and rattling it back and forth with a huge smile on his face; he though he was *so* cool :-)

After the tour we went to the exhibition area which was really lame. It had a replica of the columbia mammoth and some cases exhibited replicas of animal bones etc. We then took the elevator down to the research lab area. Down there there were a couple small windows looking into the lab and a sheet of paper taped to the wall that said "go ahead and ask question, we can hear you!". Except there wasn't a single person in the lab that we could see; so we went back upstairs and got into the car and left. All in all a somewhat disappointing stop; although seeing the mammoths was neat. We debated going to find a bookstore in Hot Springs but we were all sick of driving around so we decided to go back to the lodge. On the way we though we would go through Custer Park and drive the wild life loop.

It was getting late, probably around 4pm, when we got to Custer Park. The wildlife loop was awesome. On the way there Lyle pulled over because Chris and I wanted to take pictures of the prairie dogs. Lyle, being a Nebraska native, kept mumbling about why in the world would we want pictures of the annoying vermin he used to throw rocks at. Chris and I tried running down the prairie dogs to get pictures of them and, when they proved too fast for us, we resorted to stalking them. Well that didn't work very well either; we got a lot of pictures of empty holes in the ground though. Keegan had been sleeping and, upon the stopping of the car, had started to wake up. Apparently he got upset when he woke up and Lyle honked the horn on the car yelling that Keegan was getting upset and that we probably had enough rodent pictures. Chris and I returned to the car.

Upon entering the wildlife loop we saw a ton of elk, antelope, wild turkeys, prairie dogs and even a coyote. Finally we saw the motherload of all creatures; a Bison sitting quietly in a field. We were so excited; I especially could hardly contain myself this was *so* much more exciting than a prairie dog. As the bison slept in the field I thought about all the road signs we saw that said "Buffalo are dangerous, admire them from your car"; he didn't look that dangerous. Shortly after we saw a whole herd of buffalo in the road in front of us. The small amount of traffic going through the park came to a stop as we tried to weave our way through all of the buffalo. I opened up my window to get good pictures. That seemed to make Lyle kind of nervous; he was like "you can shut your window any time now".

The most exciting part of the ride was over after the buffalo. We realized we were only about 1/3 the way through the wild life loop and it had been some 45 minutes since we started. I was getting particularly grumpy being hungry, carsick, and tired. Keegan had woken up and Cate and Chris were trying to amuse him as he crabbed in the back. Finally we gave up on trying to get to the lodge before Keegan's feeding time and pulled the car over. Lyle fed Keegan in the back of the car while Cate and Chris wandered around looking for neat rocks. I tried to figure out how long it was going to take us to get back to the lodge. Realizing how far we still had to go; I recommended driving by Mt. Rushmore in the dark since it was already getting dark.

I was extremely car sick and asked Lyle if I could drive for a bit since that always makes me feel better. We all got back into the car when Keegan was done eating and had been changed. Shortly after I started driving we ran into the infamous burros. The walked right up to the car and stared in the windows; we stopped to take pictures. I have got to say the drive was probably one of the funnest ones I've ever done. With a spd limit of 30 mph and all the twisting and turning and the one way tunnels it was a bit of an adventure and was a fun, if long, drive. After we left the park we stopped to take some pictures of Mt. Rushmore all lit up.

After 3 hours in Custer State Park (who knew the drive would take that long) we ended up back at the lodge around 7pm. It was bedtime for Keegan and he was crabby and wouldn't eat. Keegan went down to bed. The rest of us were strangely exhausted despite having spent the majority of the day in the car. Cate and I went to go take naps. Lyle and Chris ran out to the gas station to get gas and pop. When I woke up I had another excellent dinner of popcorn and ice cream cake. We watched "America's Most Smartest Model" on TV and then went to bed. Everyone was probably in bed by 9pm. Keegan woke up around 10:30 pm hungry, so we fed him and then went back to bed. Trying to rest up for our last day in South Dakota.