We weren’t aiming for the perfect vacation — turns out you have to leave the kids at home for that — when we chose South Dakota for our first road trip.
Instead, we envisioned ourselves joining the grand tradition of families hitting the open road just to see a bunch of presidents carved into the side of a mountain.
So, the last week of August, my husband; three daughters, ages 8, 9 and 12; and I packed up our “station wagon,” a 2006 Honda Pilot, hooked up a rented pop-up camper and headed west. Here’s an account of our not-so-perfect family trip.
CORN PALACE
A late start, a picnic at a rest area and too many snack and potty breaks found us pulling into Mitchell, S.D., a bit behind schedule.
The World’s Only Corn Palace resides in the town of about 15,000 people and is, as advertised, covered with corn — husks and all in some spots — and other grains, which form huge murals that are redesigned annually. It’s building-size crop art at its best and dinner for the area’s birds.
Unfortunately, we needed to find a campground for the night and didn’t have time to go inside the Corn Palace, but we did buy a refrigerator magnet at a gift shop.
MINUTEMAN MISSILE SITE AND MORE
After a night of listening to semis barrel down Interstate 90 — the campground we chose in Oacoma, S.D., was way too close to the highway — we loaded up and headed for the Badlands, but got sidetracked by the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site Visitor Center near Philip, S.D.
The impressive center is relatively new, operations began in 2014, and the Cold War exhibits had yet to arrive at the time of our visit, but we could tour for free the launch control center located up the road and look at the missile silo even farther up the road.
As our tour started, a blind goat wandered onto the gravel driveway of the nondescript building that once housed Air Force personnel who waited day in and day out from 1963 until the early 1990s for orders to send a missile — presumably aimed at the Soviet Union. The park ranger led the goat back to the neighboring ranch and then resumed the tour, stressing how boring life could be at the launch control site and yet so terrifying for small bursts of time. The facility had a movie-stocked TV room among other amenities, but I had to wonder if a wandering blind goat ever relieved the airmen’s tedium.
Our trip to the Badlands was sandwiched in between stops at the Minuteman visitor center and touring the launch facility. By happy coincidence, we arrived on National Parks Day, so the $30 fee was waived, and we spent some time hiking the Door and Window trails. The stark and radically different terrain of buttes, pinnacles and spires is something to see. Of course, I kept imagining giant ants or praying mantis swooping in to grab us. I had seen too many low-budget horror movies as a kid, obviously.
A stop at Wall Drug in Wall, S.D., was next. We wandered through the many stores in the sprawling complex and drank several small plastic cups of free ice water, refreshing after the heat of the Badlands. Mostly my husband and I continually said, “No, we’re not going to buy that,” but we did leave with another refrigerator magnet and photos of the kids on top of a concrete jackalope.
Our day ended with Custer State Park, near Rapid City, S.D. The huge park encompasses much of the Black Hills and has several campgrounds and lodges. We parked our camper at the blessedly quiet Legion Lake campground, our home away from home for the duration of our stay.
NEEDLES HIGHWAY AND MOUNT RUSHMORE
Driving the Needles Highway, 14 miles of twisting and turning, drop-offs and one-vehicle-at-a-time tunnels, is not for people who fear heights, which is me. The rest of my family “ooed” and “ahhed” over the view, but I cowered in the passenger seat with my hands clamped over my eyes. If we hadn’t stopped at a few overlooks, I wouldn’t have seen the giant granite pillars known as the Cathedral Spires, Needle’s Eye rock formation or Harney Peak, spectacular as they are.
After a picnic at Sylvan Lake and a hike to see Little Devils Tower, we drove to Mount Rushmore, the favorite part of the trip for the kids. They were bowled over by the immensity of the project sculptor Gutzon Borglum took on from 1927 to 1941, when he carved George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln into the side of Mount Rushmore.
An interactive exhibit in the museum that allows visitors to pick a scene, push down a plunger and “blow up” part of the mountain — like workers did under Borglum’s direction — was especially fun for the kids.
DEADWOOD, S.D.
Visiting Deadwood, the legendary frontier town of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock, was not my children’s cup of tea.
They didn’t enjoy Saloon 10’s re-enactment of Hickock’s last card game (he was shot by “local rogue” Jack McCall in 1876), and they whined their way through the Adams Museum, which houses Gold Rush artifacts and those from Deadwood’s colorful past as a mecca of gambling and prostitution, as well as exhibits about Calamity Jane and Wild Bill.
The kids did perk up when they saw the taxidermied two-headed calf, however.
They saved most of their whining for Mount Moriah Cemetery, which overlooks Deadwood and is the burial site of Hickock and Martha Canary (Calamity Jane’s real name), among other Deadwood notables. The cemetery angles up the side of a hill, making for difficult walking. Plus, well, it’s a cemetery, which my middle daughter did not care for at all.
DEVILS TOWER AND CUSTER’S WILDLIFE LOOP
On our last day, we drove the nearly two hours from Custer State Park to Devils Tower National Monument (America’s first national monument) in Wyoming, and it was well worth the trouble.
The rock formation thrusts into the sky and looks raked with claw marks. A Native American legend claims bears chased seven little girls who ran to a rock. The girls prayed to the rock to save them and the rock grew. The bears tried climbing the rock but slid back, leaving behind the distinctive markings.
The formation, which figures in the 1977 movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” has been a sacred spot for generations of Native Americans and a challenge for climbers everywhere. A woman we met had climbed the tower 13 times in as many years. I, as you might have guessed, preferred to enjoy the view from the base.
We returned to Custer State Park just before twilight and decided to try our luck on the Wildlife Loop. We had seen bison a couple of times along the roadside, one nearly knocked over a sign while using it to scratch its neck, and three others had wandered through our campground one morning. We were not prepared to see the outpouring of bison along the loop, however. They walked right at us as we sat in the car and then parted. We could have touched them as they went by — but we didn’t. Bison are dangerous and unpredictable animals, postings throughout the park warned, and we believed it. It was an amazing sight, one met with a collective “Whoa!” from my family.
HOME AGAIN
And then it was time to leave. We left many attractions unseen: Crazy Horse Memorial we glimpsed from the road; we never visited Jewel Cave or Wind Cave or the mammoth site at Hot Springs, S.D. But that’s OK. We’ll have to catch them the next time we pack up the “station wagon” and hit the road.
