Thursday, May 30 and Friday, May 31

So, we continued taking in all the sights Rapid City had to offer on Thursday. We spent the morning at Reptile Gardens. It's small, but a neat place. We saw a guy give a presentation on crocodiles/alligators and snakes. Creepy! The boys thought it was cool, though!

 

 Petting a baby alligator. Grace wouldn't get near it!

 The giant tortoises. You aren't allowed to sit on them anymore, but they were still cool.

 We spent the rest of the afternoon letting the kids swim in the hotel pool. It was a cool pool with a huge twisty water slide. They swam, nonstop for over 3 hours, before we finally dragged them out. I think they would have stayed longer! We made them take a shower, then went to Olive Garden for dinner. They were pretty tired when we got back, so it was off to bed!

 

We checked out that next morning, on Friday and got in the car to start the next leg of our adventure, Eastern South Dakota and Minnesota! The weather was freezing and rainy (a trend for the next few days), so we were glad to be in the car. Our destination was the Badlands, with plans for hiking and walking some trails, but the weather had other plans. So, instead we stopped at Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota (a funny tourist trap) and looked around for a little bit.

 

 

 The rain kept me from getting a picture of all of us in front of it, but there's the front of Wall Drug. It is actually huge, a whole city block long! It's funny just to say we've stopped there!

The Badlands are actually very cool, it was a shame we couldn't get out and walk around at all. We just drove through and stopped to take a few quick looks and one quick picture. We did walk through the visitors center and see a movie about the park, but that's all. We continued on to Huron South Dakota that night, where we would stay for the night so we were close to De Smet where we were going the next day. Read on for details about that!