Way Down in the Black Hills of South Dakota

Two months ago, we took a vacation with my parents and my brother Chris's family to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Tony had a friend who had a vacation house in Deadwood, and he graciously offered to let us stay there for free.  (It wasn't until we arrived in Deadwood that I realized that Deadwood is a casino town:  South Dakota made an exception to their constitution to allow Deadwood to reclaim its historic gambling industry.  Whoops.)  We had a good time.

Highlights of the trip included:

1.  Visiting Mt. Rushmore.  The kids had matching patriotic shirts, courtesy of the usual suspect: Grandma Debbie.   On his part, Grandpa Reed helped all the travel weary souls.

2.  Visiting Storybook Village.  This is a fun park in Rapid City where everything is based on storybook characters -- think fairly tales and disney and more.  Plus, they had a cool train to ride.

 3.  Getting real cowgirl hats from Grandma Debbie so that they could look like Jessie from Toy Story.

 4.  Visiting Reptile Gardens.  Aside from looking at turtles, lizards, and other creepy-crawley things, they got to touch real tortoises, snakes, and a baby alligator!  

5.  Splunking.  Well, we took a tour of a big cave. Not sure where the camera was on that occasion.


The Black Hills are beautiful.  (They frankly look a lot like Eastern Oregon, so I may be biased....)