A Grand vacation! Wind Cave, Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks plus lots more!

This ended up being such a great trip!  We saw so many awesome things.  We thought these parks might not be too grand, but they were wonderful, and so were the many other great things we saw too!  It was well worth the nearly 3,000 miles we drove to see them. (Oh, yes...we started the vacation the night before by going to see The Importance of Being Earnest up in Cedar City.  It was hilarious!)  

Wednesday, July 23rd, we started on our journey to make it to New Castle, Colorado, to spend the night.  Along the way we stopped by Colorado National Monument to do their amazing 23-mile Historic Rim Rock Drive.  It was spectacular!  We just wished we would have had more time to do some of the hikes along the way.  We may need to make a return trip when the weather is a bit cooler and we have more time.  It was so worth making time for it in our agenda for that day.  

That evening we stayed in New Castle, CO, at the Wingate Hotel.  It was good and very close to Glenwood which is where we found Culver's to eat dinner and then enjoyed walking/driving around to see the historic sights and the amazing hot springs pool they have there.  It was a good day.  We drove about 550 miles.  The next morning we took a river walk in Glenwood where we saw the confluence of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers.  It was beautiful and got us the exercise we needed to get our day started.  

Thursday, July 24th - This day we drove to Custer, South Dakota where we stayed for 4 nights.  We used it as a hub for the many places we wanted to go in that area.  That night we had dinner at the Purple Pie Place.  It was really cute, but the food was not quite as cute as we had hoped, but good enough.  Afterwards we went on a beautiful forest drive in Custer State Park.  This park has so many awesome drives and beautiful scenery and more.  This night we got a week-long pass for $25 and went to Sylvan Lake and took the hike around it.  Such a gorgeous mountain lake with cool rocks and beautiful forest around it.  Just wish we could have kayaked or swam in it!  Custer State Park became our go to place in the evenings after we got back from adventures and sometimes we did some daytime adventures there too when we had some spare time.  It was so worth the pass price for what we got out of it.  

Friday, July 25th, - This day we went to Mount Rushmore and then in the afternoon we went to Wind Cave NP.  We did a beautiful drive through Custer State Park and the forest to get to Mount Rushmore.  The forests are FULL of ponderosa trees and green grasses and flowers covering the ground.  They were so beautiful! Along the way we stopped at the Peter Norbeck Outdoor Education Center.  It has amazing stonework.  It wasn't open at the time, but we enjoyed walking around it.  Also along the way we saw what you call pigtail bridges that were invented to fit the twisty road through the  mountains along the way to Mount Rushmore.  At Mount Rushmore we did the Presidential Trail up to the base of the bottom of the hill with the carvings.  It was a good hike.  We also did the Visitor's Center film/tour and listened to a Ranger Talk about the carving of the faces and learned some new facts.  It was a great visit. 

Then we went on to Wind Cave NP.  We had time to eat a picnic lunch and see the Visitor's Center info while we waited for our reservation time.  This cave is unique because of the honecomb shaped boxwork formations that it has in it.  We did the Fairgrounds tour that's about 2/3 of a mile with 450 stairs.  It was great.  This is a really big cave, but it felt very different from most caves we have visited because of the lack of stalagmites and stalactites.  It was formed in a different way and the boxwork are the main formations you see in it. We took a little hike after the cave tour to see the natural entrance to the cave.  

After we go back to Custer that evening, we had some time after dinner to go for the Needles Highway drive in Custer State Park.  This is such a beautiful forest/stone drive!!!  We loved every minute of it!

The last tunnel you go through is so narrow you don't know if you are going to fit...it feels like going through the eye of a needle.  And then you come out and see the actual Needle formation and...WOW!  So cool!!!  

Saturday, July 26th, - Jewel Cave National Monument, Crazy Horse Memorial, The Gordon Stockade, the Custer State Park Visitor Center, the Wildlife Station Visitor Center, the Wildlife Loop and the Bison Center.  Along the way we saw bison in the road and also wild donkeys that weren't very wild.  They loved to be fed carrots.  We loved Jewel Cave. It was so much prettier and Wind Cave, but smaller.  There's a lot that is still being explored though.  We took a little hike around when we got their because it wasn't open yet.  We were the first tour of the day.  After the tour we went on a little drive to an old cabin and stairway that the CCC built for the natural opening of the cave.  We didn't do the natural opening tour because it was shorter and by lantern light only.  We did SO many stairs in this cave.  It was a work out, but so worth it.  Our guide was also fantastic.  We had a picnic after we saw the cabin and natural opening.  Then we continued on to Crazy Horse.  

Crazy Horse Memorial is really great.  It really helps you see the native American's story and how so much was pretty much stolen from them as they kept remaking reservation boundaries and then people kept ignoring them.  

The host at the Wildlife Station Visitor Center told us what great mushroom, swiss cheese, bison burgers they had at the Blue Bell Lodge, so on our way back home after the drive, we stopped in and had them and more great food there.  They even had live country music while we were there.  It was really nice! 

Sunday, July 27, it was time to go to church in Rapid City.  We attended the Mount Rushmore Ward and enjoyed a great meeting there.  I especially enjoyed watching the way the deacons helped a handicapped boy do his part of passing the sacrament.  The whole ward was so great and seemed to just love that boy.  He was cute and very friendly.  His sister gave her mission farewell talk as part of the meeting and told about how she had spent the summer taking care of him and told how much he had taught her that would help her on her mission.  It was sweet.  After that we headed over to Badlands NP.  It was super crowded.  Lots of motorcyclists were there on their way to the Sturgis rally that is coming up in August.  It was a cool park, but not my favorite of the 3 we came to see.  It just seemed so monotone in color. We did enjoy it and made stops and did a little hike.  It has a rich fossil history and I can see that's why it needed to be preserved.  We did the scenic drive and the Visitor's Center things.  Then we headed back to Custer for our last night there.  We had saved our motel breakfast in the fridge and had it for dinner that night.  It was very good!  That evening after our dinner we for a drive in the Custer State Park and saw the "Badger Hole" cabin.  It's the cabin of a famous South Dakota state Poet Lauriat, Charles Badger Clark.  It was a really cute cabin he built and lived in.  There was a hike in the forest around it that had lots of info about him and his poetry.  I really enjoyed his poetry that was shared on some of the signs on the interpretive trail about him.  The after that, we did a beautiful little hike around Legion Lake at sunset.   

 Monday, July 28 - We have now come 1638 miles as we leave Custer to head up to Theodore Roosevelt NP.  We left via the Sylvan Lake Road to enjoy that beautiful bit of Custer State Park one more time.  Then it was a long drive to the Painted Canyons Visitor Center at the south section of this park.  We had some misty, rainy weather along the way and lots of open prairie driving.  It is so VAST and green and flat!  We looked around at the very small visitor center and then did a terrible muddy nature hike there.  At the end we found a water spigot, thank goodness, so we could get our shoes and the rest of us cleaned of from the very slick, sticky mud on us!  I did some slip sliding and really got muddy!  As we went on we did  the scenic drive another a few more hikes that we really liked and saw more herds of bison!  It turned out to be a beautiful park and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it!  That night we headed to Watford for the night and came into North Dakota along the way there.  

Tuesday, July 29 - Leaving Watford and coming back down to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt NP.  We loved this section of the park as well.  We enjoyed the scenic drive and a Caprock Coulee hike and a nature trail too. We especially liked the Cannonball mystery rocks!   After that, we made the drive to Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  Wow, was it worth the drive! It's so cool and unique.  We did the hike around the base of it and did the Visitor's Center.  We totally enjoyed it even though it was a bit out of the way.  Then we drove on to Casper/Evansville to stay the night. We had some great hamburgers for dinner here.

Wednesday, July 30 - We just sort of  looked around for what was interesting in the area for this day.  We stopped by Independence Rock and did the hike around it.  It's cool.  We went up on top on one side.  We read all the information about it.  Then down the road a while we came to Devil's Gate and stopped at the viewpoint above it and did the interpretive walk there.  Then we drove down to the Church Visitor Center for Martin Cove/Devil's Gate and toured that site with a missionary and then watched the movie they had.  We even saw a rattlesnake there! Afterwards we did the 2 mile hike to see Devil's Gate up close.  It was all very nice.    I was glad to finally see this place.  Then it was time to start the drive home.  We drove and drove and did the terrible traffic in SLC to Jay and Brynn's for a great dinner and fun evening with them.  It was good to see them and we enjoyed visiting. We had a good sleep and then got on the road for home the next morning.  (The one picture I took of them didn't turn out unfortunately.)  

Thursday, July 31 - Time to head home.  We stopped in at Beaver for gas and ice cream to celebrate the end of our trip at the Creamery.  We got home at a very decent time and ate dinner at home for the first time in a while!  It was good to be back to our own bed, but our motels for the trip were actually very comfortable and convenient.  At one place we had a room that was really for a wheel chair, but it was still good, just not much counter space and a hand shower.  

Spring Break 2025 - Chaco Canyon, Canyon De Chelly, Chiricahua NM, Saguaro NP, Billingsleys, etc.

Wow, what a great Spring Break we had!  We left Sunday afternoon after Stake Conference and drove to Ross and Lerlyn's in Aztec, NM.  We had such a beautiful drive with amazing scenery getting there.  Monday morning Ross, Paul and I went over to Chaco Canyon and had a great day walking among the ancient ruins there.  It was a bumpy drive for the last 13 miles of dirt road to get there, but so worth it.  (Lerlyn didn't feel up to the hiking and stayed home and made a wonderful dinner for us to come home to.)  We spent another night with them visiting and playing games and having a great time.  

Tuesday morning we left to head over to Canyon De Chelly.  It was another scenic drive to get there and then we spent an awesome day visiting all of the overlooks into the canyon.  You can't go into the canyon itself without hiring a guide, but there was a great young guy at the Visitor's Center that answered many questions for us both times we stopped there.  It was perfect weather again for this wonderful day. That afternoon we drove over to Pine Top-Lakeside where we spent the night.  We had some rain and snow here and there in the driving and overnights, but all of our daytime weather was just perfect for our outdoor activities.  

Wednesday morning left and we drove over to Chiricahua National Monument via the Salt River Canyon, etc. We arrived with a few hours of afternoon left to start our activities there.  We explored the Faraway Ranch section of it, watched the movie at the Visitor's Center, drove the loop drive and checked out the stops along the way, had a picnic, and hiked the short Sugar Loaf Mountain Trail and the Massai Point Nature Trail. Then it was time to head to our little studio/extended-stay motel in Willcox, which is about 40 minutes from the park.  

On Thursday we got an early start arriving at the park before the Visitor's Center opened to do the hike from there to the Heart of the Rocks Loop and return trail which ended up being about 8 miles round trip.  It was a beautiful hike with lots of amazing work done by the CCC including several very long stone stairways.  It was perfect weather.  It started out in the Lower Rhyolite Canyon Trail in the lower canyon forest and then climbed to upper Rhyolite Canyon, Sarah Deming Canyon and then to the top of the ridge where it met the Big Balanced Rock short trail and then over to Heart of the Rocks Loop that has many of the most unusual named rock formations.  It was classed as a strenuous hike, but didn't really feel like it was.  I didn't breathe hard or break a sweat because the trail was very gradual and the weather was not hot.  The rock formations that you could view along the way and then be right among at the top were so crazy cool!  Loved the whole thing.  On the way down I just glimpsed the long, dark tail of a Coati Mundi that was crossing the trail in front of us.  I sure wish I had seen the rest of it! When we got back from the hike we had a picnic by the Visitor's Center.  The only thing I was sad about was that they didn't have a park bag I could buy.  Both Chaco Canyon and Canyon De Chelly had them.  Then it was time to head back to Willcox for the night.  

Friday morning it was time to get back on the road and start the trip home. Along the way we stopped off at the Saguaro NP West Mountain Unit.  It was a quick stop, but really awesome place...maybe even better than the East one.  Then we drove over to Florence AZ to see John and Marge Billingsley.  Paul had been in the bishopric with John back in Farmington NM years ago.  They are wonderful people.  John and I had connected on Facebook a few years ago and he had invited us to stop by if we were ever down their way.  It is good that we did because John was just starting hospice care the day we came.  He was not in good shape, but it was so good to see them both.  After that we tried to take one scenic route through a canyon that ended up turning to dirt quite a ways in, so we had to turn around.  It was a really beautiful canyon with a crazy little town (Tortilla Flat) and a beautiful lake.  We found a good picnic spot along the way back and then went a different way to get to Chino Valley, our stop for that night. It snowed there that night. 

Saturday we planned to go home through Flagstaff and Jacob Lake, but when we got to the turn for Flagstaff the road was closed due to snow, so we rerouted to go through Page instead.  We enjoyed more beautiful scenery and got home about 2:30. We put things away and then headed up to take Bean to dinner in Cedar City.  After dinner we drove up the mountain a ways to see the snow. It was a nice time.  The whole trip turned out very well.  Our car is very in need of a wash due to the rain and snow, but it did a great job and we got wonderful gas mileage.  Happy Spring Break 2025!  It was a BLAST!!!