This morning we surprised the kids by stopping at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. They had a great time running around outside and checking out all of these old planes and missiles.
The tires even still work!
I found out later that this is the type of plane that my brother-in-law worked on when he was in the air force. It's a huge plane with wheels on it's wings because of how much it flexes!
We founds some ants to kill as well!
I realized a minute or two after this picture that the kids were not suppose to be sitting in these seats....Opps! They thought this was great, but the kids behind us were very upset that they didn't get to sit in them!
After that, we headed back to Rapid City to see a few more presidents. These are the ones we liked today.
After lunch, we headed over to the Main Street Square again for the kiddos to play. We warned them that they weren't wearing their swim suits so they should try to not get completely soaked?
Umm..yes...that is Parker waiting for the fountain to come on and spray right up his shorts...so much for not getting TOO wet!
Soaked from head to toe and thrilled!
Graffiti
Mt. Coolidge Scenic Overlook. Brandon knows I like to take scenic pictures and happened to see a sign for this overlook and said to go up it. Um...little did he realize just how high up it went (6,023 feet) and how narrow a 1+ lane road can be in a van! I made him lay back and close his eyes while I drove us to the top of this lookout. He also stayed in the van while I went up and took a couple of pictures...he claims it is because the children were sleeping, but I know better!
Once we made it down, we continued to drive through Custer on it's Wildlife Loop Road. Here are some pronghorn antelope.
We liked the look of this stone bridge.
We turned a corner and this bison was right outside Brandon's window. He very quickly rolled his window up and then took a couple of pictures.
There are LOTS of trees down in the black hills. Some of it is due to regular thinning of the forests, but most of it is due to the blizzard Atlas that came through last fall dropping 4 feet of snow in a couple of hours.
Do you see what I see?
We stopped at the visitors center just before closing and they told us where we could find the 300-400 herd of bison (only about a mile away)! These animals were gorgeous and great to just watch. We were smart and remained in our vehicle with doors closed. Others around us where sticking their heads out of their sun roofs and one family even got out of their van with their children and infant and stood 10 feet away from them and watched. Thankfully, the children understood why we did not get out of our van.
These are just a couple of last shots as we made our way back out of Custer State Park.
We got pizza and headed back to our cabin for our final night.
