Wood Family Goes West 2020: Day 2

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Melissa

Today I got to see my Aunt Karen! My mom’s sister lives in Sioux Falls; she met us for lunch at Falls Park. It was great to catch up and walk around and enjoy this beautiful space. Sioux Falls, the largest city in South Dakota, reminded us a lot of Greenville, SC. There is a fun, quirky downtown area mixed with natural beauty.

After lunch, we headed WEST up I90. Most of South Dakota is very remote. Where do people buy toilet paper here??? Lots of corn, hay, and cattle for as far as you can see–and you can see FAR. We stopped at two rest areas and a gas station in 250 miles. There really wasn’t much else.

As we got closer to the Badlands, the topography started to change. Suddenly, there were rolling hills. We got to the Badlands visitor’s center 3 minutes before closing time. (I’ve been cutting it close with getting my Passport book stamped!) Y’all the Badlands are SO interesting. We got some good photos, but it’s so hard to capture the openness and vastness with a cell phone camera.

Next stop was Wall Drug. You can’t drive across South Dakota and NOT stop at Wall Drug. There are signs for hundreds of miles counting down the distance and advertising their wares. We used the bathroom (again) and got fresh doughnuts.

Now we are on to Custer State Park where was are staying in a 2-bedroom housekeeping cabin at Sylvan Lake Lodge. We have 7:30pm reservations at the Sylvan Lake Lodge restaurant. Buffalo…it’s for dinner. I think we will be rolling in on two wheels to make it by then. Mont has been reminding me since 5:30 EST that it would be dinner time back home. Poor boy; he must be growing!