Some of my most cherished childhood memories are from a six-week, cross country, tent camping trip that my parents took my brother and I on, when I was seven years old. Ever since, I knew I wanted to do something similar for my kids. My husband and I decided to forgo the harder work of tent camping, for an easier, but still close to the action, three week camper trip. Now that we have survived the 5,000+ mile journey, from Birmingham to Glacier National Park and back, I will share with you how it went, in three parts. This is part one, documenting our stops in South Dakota: Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks, Mount Rushmore National Monument, and The Mammoth Site.
We got into all the National Parks for free with our fourth grader thanks to the Every Kid in a Park Program! Find out about the program HERE.
First Stop - Badlands National Park
 Canyon rim views like this one were plentiful in Badlands National Park. |
We drove all day, for two days straight (with one overnight hotel break), to reach the first stop on our trip. The last two hours of day two felt like someone kept rewinding the clock so that we were always two hours away from our destination, for what felt like an eternity. We just wanted to get there already, and a huge storm was paralleling our route along the freeway. Would we make it into the campground in time to set up camp before we collided with the storm?
Amazingly, we beat the storm! We pulled into the campground, unhitched the camper and got the water and electric hooked up just before the sky opened up. But then the wind was a little unnerving. The wind was blowing so hard, I was moved to start googling “how strong does the wind have to be before it blows a camper over.” The answers I found were not comforting.
Luckily, the storm blew over pretty quickly and then Mike had the great idea of pulling out the awning so we could sit outside and watch the storm going away. In the badlands you can see for a long, long way. And being able to see the entire width of a thunderstorm along the horizon means an amazing electrical show of lightning lighting up the clouds and flickering bolts across the sky. Amazing. The guys were enthralled.
Click HERE to see a video of lightning from the storm after it passed over us (warning: there is homemade "thunder," aka farting, in the video).
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t over yet. After we went inside to start setting up sleeping arrangements, I looked out and realized the wind was picking up again. “Uh… Mike? I think we need to get the awning down… like NOW!” Mike yelled for help within thirty seconds of getting out there and before we knew it, the awning became a sail and I was having flashbacks of working on a tall ship in a squall, from my younger days. Before we could get it under control, the wind ripped the awning out of my hands and the supports were thrown out of their tracks. I thought it was going to break for sure, but Mike was finally able to roll it up and get it secure. Sheesh. We then proceeded to hunker down in storm number two, as the wind shook the camper like crazy.
The next morning, we woke to the songs of a Western Meadowlark. Yay! We survived! The weather was clear and we were ready to start our national parks tour for real. We packed up the camper and drove into our first park: Badlands National Park.
The dominating layered and eroded landscape that makes up the Badlands appears seemingly out of nowhere as you drive into the park. A chorus of “whoa” came from the back seat. It was awesome, and made the crazy two-day drive to get there so worth it. Besides the crazy moonscape like vistas to ooh and ahh over, there were lots of animals to see. Bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, birds and gazillions of prairie dogs.
 We were lucky enough to spot many bighorn sheep in Badlands. We also got to see lots of other wildlife like prairie dogs, birds and pronghorn antelope. |
But the thing the guys enjoyed the most was when we stopped in an area that had several short hikes. Evan was begging to go down into the deep valleys from the beginning of our drive through, so when he finally got a chance to get up close to the cliffs and climb, he was in heaven. Both guys got very muddy, but were very happy.
 The guys were itching to be turned loose on the landscape in Badlands. There were many opportunities to stop and climb and they loved yelling down to us from their perches. |
We spent most of one day exploring Badlands NP, stopping at various turnouts for the views and wildlife and for one fairly short hike. You will want at least that amount of time to feel satisfied that you've seen the park, but you'll need more time to explore some of the better side roads.
Stop Two - The Mammoth Site
One place I’m glad we did not skip was The Mammoth Site, an in situ paleontological site. The site is conveniently located en route from Badlands to Wind Cave National Park. Here we spent a few hours discovering where real, live paleontologists are unearthing real, fossilized Columbian and wooly mammoths, from an ancient sink hole, where they were (unfortunately for them) trapped. Your ticket to see the site includes a brief tour (with cool, stethoscope-style head phones, so you can hear the tour director clearly), that explains how the poor creatures ended up there and the process of how they were discovered and are being studied.
 Many fossilized mammoth bones are left in place so you can see exactly where they were unearthed. |
After touring the dig site, we spent some time perusing the other exhibits on display. There are quite a few complete skeletons, from the megafauna that lived during the time of the mammoths, including a short-faced bear and a Columbian mammoth. Evan says "did you know that not all mammoths are furry?" Actually, I didn't even know there were several different species!
 Evan is dwarfed by this Columbian mammoth skeleton. |
Stop Three - Wind Cave National Park
The story goes that Native Americans once believed that humans first emerged from the tiny natural entrance to Wind Cave (the third longest cave in the U.S.). Because sometimes air flows into the cave, and other times out of the cave, native people believed the cave itself was breathing. And we got to feel that breath right on our faces.
We were shocked to discover the size of the natural entrance, wondering how in the world any grownup-sized person would be able to fit through the hole, let alone desire to do so. Nevertheless, someone did, and they discovered a vast network of miles upon miles of tunnels layered on top of each other, and holding amazing geological treasures. This is a must-not-miss stop for any family with a spelunking fan.
All the guides said to arrive early at the visitor’s center for tickets into the cave. We did and were able to get tickets for the second “natural entrance” tour of the day. Our tour guide, Anthony Rivera, was a fantastic storyteller (he kind of reminded me of Caesar Flickerman from Hunger Games) and brought the cave to life for everyone.
 Anthony Rivera, our tour guide, telling us the first of many stories about Wind Cave. The natural entrance is the small hole just to the side of his left hand! |
After a short stop at the natural entrance, the tour took us through a much larger man-made entrance into the cave. You won’t see stalactites or stalagmites in this cave, since it is a much drier cave than what those formations require. You WILL see some pretty amazing formations though, some of which are almost completely unique to Wind Cave. We were most impressed with the “boxwork” formations, of which, Wind Cave houses 95% of the world’s known formations. This fact really impressed Evan.
 Boxwork formations on the roof of the cave. |
Most people come to this park for the cave, but the topside of the park was great too. We saw our first bison here (peeing and pooping, much to the boys’ delight), as well as pronghorn antelope, mule deer, prairie dogs, abundant birds and gorgeous grassland/prairie scenery. We only spent about half a day at this park, but we could have very easily spent a full day or two exploring. We heard a lot about Custer State Park directly to the north of Wind Cave also, but did not have time to spend there.
Camping at Wind Cave NP
The campground was awesome, with large, beautiful sites. There are water hookups and flush toilets, but be prepared for no electricity, cell service or showers. If you come in late May or early June, there should be plenty of campsites available late in the day (not always the case in national parks, as we discovered later on in the trip).
We were caught in our third scary thunderstorm here, and not knowing what weather was coming our way was rather terrifying. In fact, I ended up waking Cole and dragging him into the hard roofed part of the camper when the hail started. That wasn't much comfort knowing hail often precedes tornadoes. Here's the video (really just audio, since it is so dark) of the storm just as the hail is starting. Needless to say, I insisted on buying a weather radio at our next civilized stop for supplies!
 Our first of many s'mores sessions! |
Stop Four – Mount Rushmore National Monument
The guys were really excited to see Mount Rushmore. In fact, Cole said he needed to take photos (including selfies, with the monument in the background) in order to prove to his friends that he had truly been there. Why they are so excited about it, I have no idea. Perhaps seeing it in their social studies textbooks at school was inspiring. No matter the reason, I love that they are so excited.
We had planned to do the short hike to a point under the monument for a differing perspective from the classic one at the visitor’s center. But, the weather was not cooperative and we knew we had a long day of driving to Glacier ahead of us. So Mount Rushmore was a brief stop for oohing, ahhing and picture taking, but not much else. I missed quite a bit of the whole experience due to the fact that I was catching up with a dear friend who lives nearby and had driven to meet us. Cole was also suffering from a tummy ache that was periodically plaguing him in the beginning of our journey (turned out to be a case of way too many Doritos).
However, Mike and Evan spent some time checking out the visitor’s centers exhibits on how the monument was created. They said it was very interesting.
 The obligatory family photo in front of Mount Rushmore (aka "We were here!") |
One last thing, if you happen to be traveling in this area. If gigantic faces carved into rock happen to be your bag baby, try to make time to see the Crazy Horse Memorial. We didn't, but our route took us nearby, and we could see it from the road. Just that small glimpse made me regret leaving this spot out of our trip. It will be amazing when it is finally finished (it was started in 1948)!
National Parks Road Trip Souvenir Idea
At our first stop, we discovered the National Parks Passport program. It makes a great keepsake if you are taking a tour of several parks, or know you will be visiting multiple parks in the future. Each park has one or more stamps, like a date stamp, a national parks badge stamp, and some have a special iconic stamp, that you can put in your passport. You can also buy stickers at each park with a picture and info on that park, to put in your passport. They do have a junior version of the passport, but we decided to get the regular one, so the guys can continue using it even after they’ve grown up. This is a great way to avoid the “I-need-a-souvenir-gimmes” at every single park you visit, and hopefully save you some cash, since the book is only about ten dollars and the stickers are only $1-$4 each.
 You can buy sticker souvenirs at each park and all of them have at least a date/place stamp. Some have really cool custom stamps. |
Thanks for following along for Part 1 of our journey, and stay tuned for Part 2: Glacier and Yellowstone, coming next week! For more pictures, visit our Instagram and Facebook pages.
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