Location: Badlands National Park, South Dakota
Attraction: Sight Seeing, Camping, & Hiking
Date: August 3rd, 2018

As we climbed into our newly remolded, heavily stocked motor home early in the morning, I realized that I wasn’t even tired. The excitement of a two week trip, visiting five National Parks and one National Memorial had my heart pumping.

We had the wide open road and some amazing memories in front of us and a convoy of my sisters and their families and my mother and father-in-law behind us. My parents had taken our kids a couple of days early and we were meeting them at Badlands National Park. About 30 minutes before we got to the park I noticed the motor home was driving funny. The ride seemed really bumpy and going fast made it worse. We were anxious to get to our campsite and see our kids so we decided to set up camp and figure out what to do with the RV in the morning.

I had been to the Badlands when I was a kid so it was a little nostalgic but still even more awe inspiring than I remembered. The beauty caused by erosion and mother nature just doing her thing makes for one incredibly stunning view.

We went for a little drive followed by a short hike and the kids were tired and emotional. We were nervous because there were steep cliffs and large drop offs and Mattix just wanted to jump around and be a boy. He also decided now was the time to try to tell his parents that he could do what he wanted and spent the rest of the evening in the parking lot while the rest of our group climbed around and drank in the views. (I know, we’re so mean! We did take turns sitting with him, so it’s not like it was a picnic for us, either.)

When we got back to camp, we put the kids to bed and had a few drinks while we looked up at the crystal clear sky and the billions of stars until we could barely keep our eyes open. For the second night in a row I didn’t get a good nights rest, but this time it was because it was too hot to cover up with a sheet in addition to the genuine excitement that sets in before an incredible vacation. Around midnight a large storm blew through the campground so I had to shut all the windows in the camper and pray that it would keep all the water out. We woke up dry and ready to get back on the road.