The last stop on our grand adventure of 2013 was Grandma and Papa’s house. We arrived in the afternoon on the 4th of July… just in time for a cookout. The kids greatly enjoyed tractor rides with Papa, playing board games with Grandma and running the trains in the basement.
Then they requested a visit to “The Coolest Playground Ever.” As we trekked around the US over the past 3 weeks, Scott and I learned from the kids that the playground by which all playgrounds are judged against is the wooden one by Grandma and Papa’s.
We set out from our friends in Iowa and headed north east. Our destination was the suburbs of Chicago. Scott and I visited Chicago last year for our anniversary and while I loved the city and would love to visit it again, we didn’t feel this was the trip to take the family into the city. Instead we planned a stop at Lego Discovery Center outside of the city.
After leaving the Badlands, we were Eastward bound and on the homeward stretch. We planned lots of fun stops for this part of the journey, knowing it was the final stretch and wanting to change it up a bit and keep things fun and exciting.
Our first such stop was in Sioux Falls, SD. I found a hotel there that had a water slide and a splash pool. There was also a put put course in town.
Well, I am really sad to say our trip is winding down. We visited the last National Park of our vacation and we can count the number of days left on our trip on one hand. The last park on this grand vacation was Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
We hit the Badlands on a great day and a great time of day. The sun was low in the sky making the colors pop out.
Saturday we left Mt Rushmore and drove 4.5 hours north to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND. A visit to this park meant an approximately 9 hour driving detour from what could have otherwise been a short hop from Mt. Rushmore to the SD Badlands. Sometimes a quest such as our forces your hand to take some pretty circuitous routes… we set off not exactly sure what the ND badlands had to offer that the SD badlands did not.
11 years ago when Scott and I did our first National Park/Cross Country trip, we drove through Wind Caves National Park. We hadn’t yet begun our quest to see every National Park, so we actually just drove through the park and enjoyed the prairie dogs and buffalo. It was literally a stop on our way, not a destination in itself. This time, Scott and I wanted to see the park the right way and go on a cave tour.
Between the long, late day at Black Falls of the Gunnison and the crazy hot and dirty hike at Great Sand Dunes, Scott and I found ourselves ready for a reprieve. So, we readjusted our schedule a bit and drove 3 hours to a hotel about an hour from Colorado Springs. There we chilled. I took the kids for a quick dip in the pool while Scott ran out to get us a pizza.
We arrived at Great Sand Dunes National Park in the middle of the night so our first view of the dunes was when we opened up our tent the next morning. We thought for sure we wouldn’t be able to get a site since they were first come first serve and we were so very late. But once again we were blessed with a camp site in the park.
We left Canyonlands mid day on Monday and got a hotel in Montrose, Co. We were greeted with a fabulous view of the snow topped Rocky Mts. Scott took the kids swimming while I did laundry. Then we splurged and went out for dinner at Applebees. It was a welcome change from fast food/Subway. The next day we hit Black Canyon of the Gunnison!
This was a hard park to fully comprehend.
We arrived in Mesa Verde National Park a few hours before sunset. We had been hoping to catch the Twilight Tour of Cliff Palace but tickets are sold on a first come basis and, much like we expected, we weren’t the first to come. We opted for a sunset drive along the loop with some pretty overlooks and booked tours for the following morning.
The sunset drive was really fascinating.