We reached Rapid City at about 6:30 pm. Let's keep in mind this is Mountain Time, so actually, it would 7:30 pm Central Time.
That said, we left Sioux Falls at 10:30 after checking out at 9:00 and spending a little time at Walmart.
10:30 to 7:30 comes to 10 hours. The predicted time on Google Maps was only 5.5 hours. Why am I making such bad time???
We stopped at the Corn Palace for about 45 minutes, and this was unplanned.
We ate our picnic at a Rest Area because I knew we wouldn't get to the Badlands in time to eat there, and this was a good decision because CAN YOU IMAGINE trying to have a picnic at the unbearable Badlands? It was about 110 degrees there, and there were really no "picnic spots" anyway.
We entered the Badlands at the NE entrance and got out to see an Overlook and take some photos. After that, I left the car running, and I let the kids get out and take a few pics and then get back in.We took the scenic route from the NE to the opposite end, and it took so long to get out of there. It was beautiful, we some long-horned sheep (well, 2), but it was long.
At some point during the Badlands visit, the car stopped recognizing my phone and wouldn't connect to it, so I could not use the Google Map on the screen. The same thing happened yesterday but eventually, it did kick in.
We found our Canyon Lake Resort, which we were totally looking forward to. Unlike the internet photos, it is a rundown resort and the room smelled bad when we first entered. It's also very easy to get locked out, which happened twice to me in the first 30 min. She showed us some places where we could eat outside, and after ordering a pizza and making a salad, we took our dinner to a nice veranda overlooking the lake. But the bees. They started going after us and the food, and we got chased out of there. We couldn't finish our dinner because we threw it all into a big salad bowl and ran to our room.
What I learned about today:
Ailin is feeling stressed out because she did complete her HW before the trip, and she is now realizing how impossible it is to do on a road trip. (Her HW requires her to use wi-fi for most of it.)
Luka is not that interested in this road trip. Maybe he will be when we get to Yellowstone, but so far, he is not being his best self.
Swimming with Ailin is fun and relaxing.
Driving can be both reflective and hard. It's not the lively, fun conversational/learning opportunity I had imagined. They either take lots of photos out of the car windows OR watch stuff on their smartphones OR sleep. There is very little conversation.
Lots of people ride their motorcycles to Sturgis, but many people drive and pull their bikes on trailers. We met some people in the pool, and they told us all about their Sturgis adventures. I had some questions about what it's like to ride a motorcycle on Hwy 90 for so many hours at 80mph.
Oh, and Hwy 90 switches up from 70 to 80 sometime during South Dakota.
The Badlands is really hot. I cannot imagine that people camp there or spend any amount of time there at all. The movie that really inspired me to do this trip had some major scenes in the Badlands.
Eating outdoors is nearly impossible here. Too many gross flies and bees.
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