Day 16 - Mount Rushmore & the Badlands

Camping at Yellowstone was all full, so we had no other choice than to keep driving. There were no open hotels within hours of the park either. [Props to the Prius for being able to make it 450 miles on a single tank of gas!] At two points during the night we stopped at rest areas for potty breaks in Montana and found them extremely sketchy. We were reminded that the Arizona prison escapees were still on the loose, so we googled their last reported where-abouts and as it turned out we were in their path. The last sentence of the news release stated that they were frequenting national parks, campsites, and rest areas......so we were pretty much out of luck.

Kim drove until about 5am that night and once we entered the state of Wyoming we found a really nice visitor center that was just opening that we were able to take a little nap at.

[South Dakota has beautiful golden fields]

We were excited this got us so close to our next destinations of Spearfish Canyon, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands National Park and afforded us a luxurious 2-night camping experience!

[Mount Rushmore]

Sturgis was having their 70th Annual Bike week, and there were thousands of motorcycles in town!!!

We arrived in the early evening to discover that the two young women beside our campsite were from Richmond! We were shocked since we hadn't event seen a VA license plate west of New Orleans!! They were also on a cross country adventure and we were excited to hear other people say "y'all" for the first time in weeks!

We enjoyed cooking over the camp-stove that andrews Aunt & Uncle gave us for a wedding gift 5 years ago and having a restful and relaxing evening.

His Aunt Susan Chapel gave us a Badlands tip to make sure and catch the "Night Sky" ranger program at the park which was amazing! It started at 8:30 and it was close to 11 before we were ready to head back to the tent for the night. We enjoyed watching the moon, learning about different galaxies, constellations, seeing the milky way with our bare eyes, and how amazing it was as the ranger used a 5 mile laser pointer to show us various astronomy highlights!