The Adventure Begins

9:42 pm and we’re about an hour from our first night’s resting place. Yee ha!

The day started with a 6:00am wake-up call (we let the kids sleep until 6:30). Out the door by 7:30. Big shout out to Adam and Melissa for putting us all up and loving Thorkey despite her morning face licks! Sleepy cranky crowd until we hit our first major stop in Mitchell, SD – The Corn Palace.

For those of you who have never been to the Corn Palace – you are truly missing out. It is a building decorated with corn parts. I think we spent more time trying to get back on I-90 than we did in Mitchell. But we have pictures and that is all that matters.

We mis-timed lunch on the way out of Mitchell (or maybe it was our desire to put some distance between us and the Palace) and had a wonderful sandwich making assembly line in the car – yum! Kids got through two movies, a lot of music and a lot of napping. Thorkey (queen of the car) spent time moving from lap to lap until Sydney built her a throne out of pillows that she truly enjoyed.

Next major stop was the Badlands. Before entering the park, we pulled over to some Prairie Dog wonderland – I know that they are essentially rats, but when they are called “dogs” and you can feed them peanuts from your hand, well, they’re kind of cute.

As for the Badlands, in one word, awesome! We drove the 40 mile loop, got out at most of the scenic overlooks and let the kids climb everywhere allowable – definite energy release. Poor Thorkey was confined to the car, but just seemed happy spending the day with her pack. The Badlands loop ends in another “famous” South Dakota town – the town of Wall, population 818 – where we had dinner and visited the Wall Drug Store. What is the Wall Drug Store? Well, based on the 957 billboards we passed and the 30 minutes we spent inside, there is free ice water, $.05 coffee, and about every other thing you can imagine that might show up in a tourist attraction drug store.

Kids are doing fantastic and entertaining themselves well. Damon made me listen to some boring dude read The Time Machine for far too long, but I’m trying to be the good navigator and keep quiet! As I look up from typing, all I see is a horizon filled with unbelievable pink and orange skies. Just a minute, I’m going to take a picture. Breathtaking!

Less than an hour to Rapid City. 676 Miles under our belt. Looking forward to an awesome day of caving and carved rock faces tomorrow.

Day 1 photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/donnaweinberg/AdventuresOfMonkeyHouse?authkey=Gv1sRgCNjf7I3an8-DNg#

And a few notable quotes:

Lauren: Where are the buffalo?
Lauren: This place is FOC (full of crud) – referring to the Wall Drug Store.
Sydney: I didn’t get to feed a prairie dog because t hey wouldn’t come to me L
Sydney: Donna, I do NOT want to be in any pictures (only lasted for the early part of the morning).
Tyler: Cookies? (Don’t ask)
Tyler: Is that a fossil? I found a fossil. No, really, it is a fossil.
Damon: Day 1, no rattlesnakes. 7 days to go.
Donna: Stop hitting each other. Stop flicking each other. Anything that starts with “can I have” the answer is “NO”