Saying Goodbye to South Dakota

On our last day in South Dakota, we got to spend time in the small town of Keystone, we could walk to the main street from our hotel. On our walk, we passed by these cute yellow-bellied marmots.

I love when the Burton boys get excited about animal sightings.

The main drag in Keystone looks like an adorable, old fashioned western town.

The Madisons and I got some pizza for lunch and ate it out on the patio which made for such a fun, relaxing meal.

Oh South Dakota, you're so weird, but in the best way

Keystone is known for it's old fashioned fudge, so of course we had to try some!

Then we went back to the hotel to pack up and get ready to fly out the next day.

Throughout the trip I had been collecting kinds huckleberry treats, I was excited to have so many sweets to enjoy on the plane.

That night we had our last meal of the trip on the balcony of the restaurant of our hotel, we were surround by green hills and could even see a little bit of Mount Rushmore in the distance, it was such a fun meal.

We ordered s'more nachos for dessert and they were goooood.

During dinner, we surprised mom and dad with a little gift we had all been working on last couple of days. All of us either wrote them a little note, or drew them a picture of some of our favorite memories from the trip. It was so sweet watching them read through the book and hear what everyone loved.

Bethy did quite a few beautiful watercolors of some of the animals we saw throughout the week.

James' drawing of the family sitting in the stadium at the rodeo, was one of my favorite entries.

This trip was so much fun, and we made so many wonderful memories. Even a year later we are still talking about all the fun we had on this trip. Our family has such a great time when we are together, we are all so grateful we got the opportunity to be all together touring through this gorgeous part of our country.

Wall Drug

Trying to accurately explain the epic landmark known as The Wall Drug store is difficult, there are no words to describe it and pictures just don't do it justice. 

We had no idea what we were in for when we visited this "store," we thought 45 minutes would be MORE than enough time to stroll through a tacky souvenir shop and get a free glass of water. We had no idea that we would be adventuring through what felt like miles of all kinds of different stores, snack counters, and random exhibits.

When we first entered, it looked like a normal, quick stop souvenir shop...

We found our way to the famous Free Ice Water, which is how all this got started.

The small town drugstore made its first step towards fame when it was purchased by Ted Hustead in 1931. Hustead was a Nebraska native and pharmacist who was looking for a small town with a Catholic church in which to establish his business. He bought Wall Drug, located in a 231-person town in what he referred to as "the middle of nowhere," and strove to make a living. Business was very slow until his wife, Dorothy, thought of advertising free ice water to parched travelers heading to the newly opened Mount Rushmore monument 60 miles (97 km) to the west. From that time on business was brisk.

"Free Ice Water. It brought us Husteads a long way and it taught me my greatest lesson, and that's that there's absolutely no place on God's earth that's Godforsaken. No matter where you live, you can succeed, because wherever you are, you can reach out to other people with something that they need!" - Ted Hustead

Next up was some donuts, we had been told by several people that we had to try the donuts at Wall Drug, so we made sure to try them out!

The seating area for the donuts and other snack counters near by was unexpectedly beautiful with a stained glass ceiling and lots of cowboy art on the walls.

Then we set off to explore as much of this world famous 76,000 sq ft mall, we all headed in different directions and we all saw different things.

Random things, like this group of mannequins playing poker, were tucked in all over the place, you just never quite knew what would be around the corner in this place.

This fossil store was one of my favorite spots 

There is a section known as "The Backyard" where there were fun things for kids to do like pose on a giant jackalope statue or watch a gorilla play the piano.

This is a well known piece of art, it is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid carved into the same pillar

Thomas, asleep in the back of the van in his brand new cowboy boats, accurate describes how we all felt after touring through the Badlands all day with no AC and then racing through Wall Drug