Vacation: Day 5

Friday, July 19

Depart: Custer State Park

Destination: Rapid City, SD

            Adoba Hotel Rapid City/Mt. Rushmore, Rapid City

Distance: 44 Miles

Driving Time: 56 Minutes

Possible stops along the way: Jewel Cave National Monument   


We woke up this morning to thunder and lightening at 520am.  Katie had a much better night's sleep, but did decide that the storm was an important alarm clock, and stayed up.  She promptly fell asleep in the car once we got going.
We explored more of Custar State Park, including a winding off-road trip to the top of McKinley lookout, and a few paths that took us to some great spots to see the skyline, prairie dogs, and even a buffalo!  

We then traveled on to Jewel Cave National Monument, where we waited for about an hour to do a quick tour into the caves.  With the high cliffs Katie was stuck in our arms, and hated it.  The views were similar to the ones in Luray Caverns for what I remember, but we only saw one room of this 3rd largest cave system in the world.. So who knows what we could have seen!

 

 

Next we went to Crazy Horse. Katie was captivated by the Native American dancing and music.  We walked around the museum and grounds.  It was a very rich cultural experience.  Adam bought stone from the monument - one for Katie and one for William.  

 

 

We then ventured onto Mt Rushmore after a quick stop to grab pizza to go (mmm).  The drive to mt Rushmore was a quick one.  We parked and went into the park area.  It was as impressive as pictures you see in movies and television. 

 

 

We made the, again, quick drive to Rapid City where we settled in and headed down the street for dinner at Firehouse Brewery.  Good food and I had just a sip of the beers from Adam and Matt's samplers,  a solid unfiltered wheat was the one I was sad not to have more of...

I had two tricky points today. One was when I got my lowest and highest blood sugar score yet.  Lowest was at the top of the overlook which meant I had a snack.. highest was after lunch, but was much much higher than expected.  I re-measured after our trek around mt Rushmore, and everything seemed fine.  Here's hoping it was a fluke of some sort.  

The other was he godly slow pace I had when waddling the half mile loop around mt Rushmore.  Yes, I know, elevation, pregnancy, fatigue, ... I still felt really sad that I literally was getting passed by old ladies going up and down stairs.  Don't worry. Mom. I'm taking good care of myself, but it's frustrating!