travel dates: July 2022 Our first visit to the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, SD in 2016 ranks right up there with our very best travel memories. The kids spent their time riding bikes across the prairie, running from barn to barn to cuddle with kittens, and just generally having the time of their lives. […]
Storybook Land and Wylie Park Campground in Aberdeen, SD: A Surprise Hit
travel dates: July, 2022 I don’t remember how I came across Storybook Land way back in the planning days before our 2022 summer trip. It was pretty much on the way between Theodore Roosevelt National Park and our next planned stop at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, SD. We needed something to break up […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rapid City with Kids: Our Two, Too Short Visits
It’s 98 degrees in Rapid City, South Dakota. Dave and Abe have found a playground with a splash pad downtown and are hanging out there with all the other reasonable humans in the area. My older children, on the other hand, are dragging me all over downtown, begging for just a couple of more photos […]
Exploring Custer State Park with Kids
People like to pay Custer State Park in South Dakota the compliment of saying that it’s so good it could be a National Park. After visiting a million or so National Parks and a fair number of state parks this summer, I’m prepared to concur: Custer State Park can hold its own with many of the 59 […]
Game Lodge Campground at Custer State Park: Campground Review
Travel dates: June 7-12, 2017 The Black Hills is one of those happy locations where the problem isn’t finding a good campground, but narrowing the many great choices down to one. Or two or three if you want to move around the area. We were coming off of a string of one and two night […]
The Badlands with Kids: National Park or World’s Best Playground?
At Yellowstone, everything will kill you; you can’t walk 20 yards without reading a sign about how you’re going to be eaten by a bear or gored by a bison or boiled alive in a mudpot. At Grand Teton, you can admire the majestic, snow capped mountains….but you can’t actually get to the top of […]
A Review of Cedar Pass Campground at Badlands National Park
Travel dates: June 5-7, 2017 We passed by a lot of National Park campgrounds this summer because most of them don’t have hookups, and we’re not set up for not having hookups. So when we got a chance to stay at Cedar Pass Campground, inside the actual park in the Badlands, complete with electric hookups, […]
RV Camping at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, South Dakota: So Many Kittens!
This is going to be a really great post, because I have so many kitten pictures: De Smet wasn’t really on the way from Sioux Falls to the Badlands, but it wasn’t that far out of the way, so when I learned awhile back that they have RV sites right there at the Ingalls Homestead, I […]