South Dakota and beyond

Mt. Rushmore is only a 6 hour drive from our house so we felt like we couldn't not go at some point. We've planned to go a couple of times that didn't work out but we finally made it. Mt. Rushmore is pretty amazing but you can only spend about 2 hours there, tops, so we got to see and do lots of other cool stuff too. There's also lots of stuff we didn't do. It's a pretty interesting area.

There is a park on top of a hill in the middle of Rapid City called Dinosaur Park. It was created in the 30s with some highly realistic sculptures of dinosaurs. Kinda cheesy, but since the little lady LOVES dinosaurs and it was free, we went. Plus it did have a pretty cool view of the city.

On that same hill we found a little hidden gem, a petrified forest. It was SO COOL! They look exactly like trees still but they are rocks!

There's also a place called Reptile Gardens that's basically a zoo with just reptiles and a few birds. It was pretty cool. We got to see a snake and alligator show where they showed a HUGE burmese python and some venomous snakes and wrestled an alligator. At the end of the gator show we got to pet a baby alligator! They also had giant tortoises that you could get up close and personal with.

 

 Only a couple of hours drive from Rapid City is Devils Tower, so we had to go there too! It was super cool. So fun to see.