Day 3: To Custer, South Dakota

It was pretty quick and easy leaving from the truck stop in the morning. I packed sandwiches for lunch and we headed off for the badlands, which was only less than 2 hours away.
Wow! What an impressive thing to see! I did not expect the National Badlands Park to be so big and vast. The scenery is so surreal after so many miles of fairly flat terrain. It felt like another world.

 There was a Window Trail and a Door Trail that we hiked, both were easy and fun. After I took the picture of Ben standing in the "door", I realized, our camper was perfectly parked to be visible framed by the "door"! Very cool.

The boys had a lot of fun climbing around on the rocks!

 By far, our favorite part of the badlands was when we did a more strenuous 1/4 mile steep hike to the Saddle Pass. It was really great fun.

 Yes, that is us ... Alex and I (Jenny) went all the way to the top of that peak! It was thrilling.

 This is back at the bottom where Elaine and Leroy were waiting in the van. The tall peak in the background is the one we hiked to the top of!!

Daryl did some really hairy driving around almost hairpin turns. Here's a photo taken from our van down to the camper right behind us! There was one area where the road was down to one lane for construction and I bet he thought there was no way he could fit with the camper. Then we saw there was a semi truck behind him, which is of course much bigger, which gave a bit of reassurance! I'm glad I was jut driving the van!

 

 

 

 After leaving the badlands area, we stopped at Wall Drug. another tourist trap. I really do not know what the big deal is, except a bunch of gift shops, etc. Then we drove on to the Black Hills. We drove into Custer State Park and almost immediately came across this Pronghorn right along the side of the road!

A little bit later, we also saw several elk (I think?) and Alex managed to get some good photos!

 

Our Campground, Wheels West RV Park has full hook-ups, which is nice! We did dishes, had frozen pizzas for supper, and had nice showers in the bath house!