South Dakota!

Back in summer of 2013, our bffs Craig and Macall moved to Chicago. So a year later, we decided that we needed to get together again. So we planned a time to meet exactly halfway between Eagle and Chicago... which, as it turns out, is Mount Rushmore! So I took a couple days off of work, and on September 10th we drove all the way to South Dakota! 

The first night when we got close to where we were trying to go, it started snowing HARD. We were moving slow and it got to be so late that we literally just pulled off the freeway and slept for a few hours in the car. ha! 

The next morning we met up with Craig and Macall! We had no time to waste, so we headed right to Wind Cave National Park. We got to go on a tour of the cave and it was super awesome. It is full of box work. It was huge, and we only got to see such a small part of it! After the tour we drove around and looked at wildlife and had fun. 

The next morning we headed to Devil's Tower. It was pretty chilly still, so we didn't hike around it a ton, but it was so cool! I couldn't believe how huge it was!

We couldn't stay too long though, because we had so much to do and see! So we headed out to Deadwood, a tiny little historic town in SD. We went to this little saloon where Kyle and Craig volunteered to act in the little reenactment of the killing of Wild Bill Hicock. It was hilarious. We also drove through Sturgis on our way to actually go see Mount Rushmore. We got there just in enough time to take pictures before the sun set. And, after the sun was down, we went to Crazy Horse and got to watch their (funny) light show for free!

They gave us all root beer because the boys participated!

The next morning, we headed down towards Badlands National Park, but made a lengthy and amazing stop in Wall, SD, famous for their Wall Drug store. It is a really cool and crazy story of how it got famous, look it up if you're interested:) But these days, it is a HUGE tourist attraction/ drug store/ restaurant/ shopping area. We had a lot of fun. And then we drove into the Badlands, where we threw a football around and had to go rescue it from the bottom over and over. Then we decided to climb all the way down the whole thing to chase a buffalo grazing in the valley below. A little treacherous, but hilarious and so much fun. We barely made it back up the cliffs before the sun set. Then we camped and woke up to a herd of buffalo moving across the prairie! That was super cool. We had to leave to head home straight from there. It was a short trip, but definitely one for the books!

Craig heading down the cliff!