Fall Break - South Dakota - Day 2

We had a lot of options for what we wanted to do on Friday.  We listed off a bunch of options for the kids to choose from and they opted to go to a Gold Mine to pan for gold and take the scenic drive around Custer State Park and of course swim.  So after breakfast we headed down the road to the Big Thunder Gold Mine.  We decided to take the tour of the actual mine before we went panning.  It was a chilly day and since I forgot to pack Mia's jacket, Halen was nice enough to let her wear his inside the mine cause it was pretty cold inside.  It was essentially just one long tunnel that lead to a bigger "room" at the end but the kids were fascinated by the history of it and the techniques they actually used to dig the tunnel.

The entrance wasn't much taller than Halen
and we all got to wear those cute hats

Looking down the tunnel

After the tour, we went out for a demonstration on panning for gold.  We bought each of the boys a panning "kit" that had some very small pieces of gold in it and they actually found a few of them that they got to bring home.  We bought Mia a kit that had some fun rock jewels in it that would be easier for her to mine.

Alex found a piece of gold pretty quick

Halen had some pretty good technique

We panned for about an hour & found a few pieces of gold

We decided to take the same road we had the night before (Needles Hwy) with all the tunnels so we could actually see Mt Rushmore this time now that it was lighter.

Beautiful!!!

We didn't know what kind of animal life we'd see on the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park since it was the middle of October but we were hopeful we'd at least see something.  When I went with my family back when I was in high school, I remember seeing a few deer and lots of gophers but that's about it so I was hoping for a little something else for the kids.  Luckily we found more than deer and gophers.

We found antelope

And buffalo!

This donkey didn't want to move for anyone.  We stopped & watched
him for a while before deciding he wasn't moving.

He glared at us as we went by :)

There were 5 buffalo sleeping in the field & the kids were a
little hesitant about getting out of the car but they were fine

We actually saw quite a few buffalo (Halen kept count but I don't remember now) but we found out that they had just done a huge roundup of the herd to take some to auction so apparently there a quite a few more normally but we still saw enough to satisfy us.  We actually saw one (pretty sure it was the same one we saw the day before) as we were leaving the park that walked right by our car that I captured on video...it was really neat.

After the long afternoon of driving around, we were ready to get out and stretch our legs so we headed back to Rapid City and did the walking tour around town.  In about an 8 by 2 block radius, they have a statue of every US president on each corner.  There was a map and little bio of each president online that we had printed out and brought with us so we could do a little history lesson on each man.  It was pretty interesting to see the poses that they chose to portray each of them and hear a little bit about their life and presidency.  I thought the kids would get bored of it before we finished but they were excited to see who the next one was so we went to every statue in town...all 42 (because they didn't have one of Obama yet and Cleveland was president twice).

Randy's favorite president...George W Bush

Abe Lincoln with one of his boys

I could seriously do a whole post with pics of the kids posing with each statue but it would take up a lot of space so I'll print them off for them later.   But after we finished the last president, we got a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel so the kids could swim...they could hardly wait to go back down the slide.

My cute swimmers

Alex was trying to do tricks as he came out the slide

Halen got braver and braver each time down

Randy even took advantage of the slide that night

Mia mostly sat on the steps and played

But daddy talked her into going down with him & she
liked it...just not enough to go again. :)

They swam until the pool closed that night and absolutely had a blast.  We were all pretty tired after that but BYU football was playing Mississippi State that night so of course the boys had to stay up and watch it so the rest of us really didn't get to sleep very early.  Oh well, just another memory. :)