travel dates: November 18-20, 2017 It was the night before we were all going to go to Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class, and I was fretting. I’d never been in the same room with a real, live president before. What would we say? What were we supposed to do? Would the Secret Service be suspicious […]
Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY: A Shortish Visit with Kids
Travel date: June 14, 2017 If you have a day to spend in Cody, WY, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West can easily fill it for you (and then some). The most common description of this place is that it is “Smithsonian level.” I can vouch for that, adding that it comes without the […]
Buffalo Bill State Park in Cody, WY: Campground Review
travel dates: June 13-15, 2017 Our trip from Devil’s Tower to Cody was fraught with drama. First we had to drive over the Bighorn Mountains, which I’d started worrying about probably a full year before our trip. This went fine. (I talk more about it in my short recap of that part of the trip). Then […]
Devils Tower National Monument with Kids: A Stormy Night at America’s First National Monument
Travel dates: June 12-13, 2017 The danger of giving yourself only one afternoon/evening to tour Devils Tower, America’s very first National Monument (designated as such by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906) is that a poorly timed thunderstorm can really mess up your plans. We got to the KOA next door to the park fairly early in […]
Devils Tower KOA Campground Review: A KOA with a View
Travel dates: June 12-13, 2017 This was one of my favorite moments from our trip: brothers spending the evening hanging out at the campground playground with Devil’s Tower in the background. That’s a pretty good summer right there. The main thing the Devil’s Tower KOA has going for it is its proximity to the park […]
Wind Cave National Park and the Mammoth Site with Kids: Black Hills South
travel dates: June 11, 2017 Wind Cave National Park Our family had just declared Ranger Reed from Mount Rushmore our favorite Ranger ever, but just a few days later we found ourselves handing off the title to Ranger Earl at Wind Cave National Park. Sorry Ranger Reed. There’s a lot of competition out there in […]
Crazy Horse Memorial: Even More Black Hills
I’m just going to come right out and say it: Crazy Horse Memorial is kind of a weird place. I didn’t know quite what to make of it, and I’m not sure it knows quite what to make of itself. More than anything else–more than a tribute to its namesake or to Native Americans in […]
Things to Do with Kids in and around Gainesville, GA
travel dates: October 6-9, 2017 As I mentioned in my campground review of Don Carter State Park, some bad weather cut our trip to the Gainesville area down to one full day from a planned two, so we didn’t get to everything on our list. But we did fit a good bit into our one day […]
Don Carter State Park: Campground Review
travel dates: October 6-9, 2017 We usually try to take advantage of long weekends to go to places that are out of reach for regular weekend trips. But when we were looking at Columbus Day weekend, we realized that Dave had the Monday off, but Ari (who’s taking dual enrollment classes at a local college […]
Visiting Mount Rushmore with Kids: More Black Hills
Travel dates: June 9-11, 2017 It’s impossible to see Mount Rushmore for the first time. It’s one of the most iconic images in the world, and most of us have had it burned into our brains for as long as we can remember. But if you make the trip to the Black Hills of South […]