Day 6
After a Very Very Very looooong day yesterday we are thankful to have at a max only an hour to drive today. Once again we awoke to cold weather this morning in the high 40's and with a little drizzle. After breakfast we started our tour (hiking) of the Badlands National Park. We spent a couple hours on our first trail where we felt like we were on another planet. The rock and soil is very soft and clay like so it breaks apart easily. Of course, with the rain it also sticks easily to your shoes :-). Our biggest challenge on this trail was keeping up with the kids. This was an exercise like hearding cats. About the time we would catch up with one, another would be at the top of a pinacle that we could not fathom how they were going to get down. Just about the time we thought we got their attention and they understood to come down someone else would pop up next to them and to our horror most of the time it would be Christina. Of course in her mind she is as old as they are and can do anything they do but about half the time she would get up on these tall rocks and then need help getting down.
The Badlands are like a playground for kids so as you can imagine this scene of Caleb and Joshua jumping out of the car and immediately climbing the rocks happened at every stop. The girls were usually not too far behind. I don't think the word danger is in any of our kids vocabulary. They all think they are invincible. At one stop all of us but Gretchen decided to do this 1/4 mile hike up through these peaks. Going up was quite strenuous and once we were up there the issue was how to get down safely. The path was quite unstable because this clay continues to break apart beneath you and the path was almost vertical in some places. So our best and only option was to sit and scoot down the mountain. This was one time we threw our pride out the window.
After lunch we went through an area where animal fossils had been found in the last few years that dated back millions of years (according to the ranger). As we continued to drive, there were several overlooks that were just breathtaking. As you stand high upon the mountain and look across these jagged rocks and see the many different colors of rock/clay and how beautiful and amazing it is, you really have no choice but to give God all the glory for this site. There is grass that grows on some of them and animals that live amongst them and again how perfectly it all aligns together can only be from Him our Creator. There was also beautiful prairies to overlook that go on for miles.
One of the highlights of the day was at the very end of our trip in the park when we stopped at what is called "Prairie Dog Town". it was a huge open field and in it were just hundreds of prairie dog holes and lots of prairie dogs sticking up out of them. They make this funny squeaking sound and it sounds like they are talking to each other. In some cases there are 2 or 3 gathered at one hole like they are visiting their neighbors. In the distance we could see several Bison just laying enjoying the day. However, as we turned to leave up from the crevacis of the Badlands walks a big bull bison. We were able to just sit in our car safely and watch him go by and take a few pictures. Gretchen decided we could wait on catching one to make stew.
Tomorrow we hit MT Rushmore and Custer State Park. Thanks for praying for us and our safety. One other quick note from the day was that we met a family from Alcoa TN (near Tony's mom's) and saw a couple from Ole Miss. It is truly a small world.