Our Travel Adventures

4/30/2015 Left Rapid City SD Flying J to Custer State Park SD.  Windy cool day.  We made a stop at a RV shop to have a leak repaired in our Generator gas line.  Meet a couple local ladies that own and travel in a C Class Motor Home.  Nice talking with them and sharing experiences. We stopped continued on to Keystone SD.  About a 40 min. drive to Keystone SD.  Keystone is about 3 miles from the monument. Rained while we were their, so we continued South to Custer State Park, SD to camp for the night.  Cost $15.00 for 7 day State Park pass, and $26.00 for one nights camping with electricity.  Nice Camp ground.   Tomorrow we will explore the park scenic loop before moving on to Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore National Monument.

4/29/2015 The Prairie Homestead is a sod house located at 21070 South Dakota Highway 240 north of Interior , South Dakota . The house was constructed by Ed Brown and his wife in 1909. The Browns built their home with sod bricks and topped it with a grass roof. Western South Dakota was one of the last regions of the state to be settled by homesteaders, and the house is now one of the few remaining sod homes in the state. The home is now open to visitors for tours and houses farm animals and prairie dogs on its grounds. Note: Rattle Snake about 5 feet away from Becky as she walked by.  Rattles are a scary sound when you don't know where they are coming from.  Becky moved on and everything is okay.

4/28/2015 The South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre, South Dakota is the headquarters of the South Dakota State Historical Society . Opened in 1989, the center houses the State Historical Society’s administrative, historic preservation, and research and publishing offices . The Center is also the home of the State Archives and Museum. Through these five programs, the South Dakota State Historical Society preserves and interprets the history and culture of South Dakota and its people. The Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society was founded in 1901. The collection has grown to over 30,000 artifacts. The State Archives was created by the State Legislature in 1975, but the origins of the archives collections date back to the creation of the State Historical Society in 1891. The State Archives contains over 12,000 cubic feet of records that document many aspects of South Dakota’s history and heritage.

The Lakota gave this land its name, “Mako Sica,” meaning “land bad.” Located in southwestern South Dakota, Badlands National Park consists of 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires blended with the largest protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. It is desolation at its truest, where you can look for miles and see no sign of civilization. This land has been so ruthlessly ravaged by wind and water that it has become picturesque. The Badlands are a wonderland of bizarre, colorful spires and pinnacles, massive buttes and deep gorges. Erosion of the Badlands reveals sedimentary layers of different colors: purple and yellow (shale), tan and gray (sand and gravel), red and orange (iron oxides) and white (volcanic ash). Badlands National Park also p