Baby Bison and the Badlands

Introduction

Every summer, I like to go on vacation with my family. I'm a beach person. I love that my kids are of the age that we enjoy building Sandcastles, but that's the topic of a different blog entry. We also try to do other trips too. In the summer of 2022, we decided to do a road trip to the Badlands in South Dakota.

At the time, we liked to do road trips on vacations. It was still in the COVID era (at least to us) and we just felt safer being in control of our surroundings. It is also a lot cheaper to do a road trip rather than flying. 

🚗 The Road Trip Dynamic

Driving can be hit or miss in the kids' moods. Sometimes they're fighting, sometimes someone is whining, a lot of times we are quiet and other times we are copacetic. In any case, my wife Kelly gets car sick when she's not driving so she gets to drive and I manage the moods of the back seat. 

During the road trips of the early 2020’s, there was a lot of time waiting for the next destination so Danielle and I would take the opportunity to do some writing of our story. When we write our books, we occasionally bring a piece of ourselves into the writing.

🦬 The Custer Wildlife Loop

The Badlands was a trip that found itself in our Cyber Heist mystery. Now technically, when we were on that trip, we were writing our first writing book (the Gold Cup mystery). 

This trip was a memorable trip for many reasons but the thing that found itself into our book was the Custer Wildlife Loop. We visited this loop which was about a two or three hour drive if I remember correctly. So you ask what made this so memorable? It was a pretty landscape to which for the first half hour, the only wildlife that we saw was prairie dogs. We finally saw a bison from a couple hundred yards away. That bison wouldn't even turn around to show us his front. We moved on from that Bison to continue driving for more than two hours expecting to see something, anything. Sadly it was mostly only more prairie dogs and no more Bison. If I had known that some day I would be writing a blog about it, then surely I would have taken a picture of that lonely bison sass. Years later, we went to Yellowstone and there was a night and day difference in animal viewing (Yellowstone takes the crown).

So the part that would get in the Cyber Heist book was a song we sang about that bison. As a back story, during the trip we were talking about kids songs. I mentioned Baby Beluga to which we YouTube’d it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDx9zqDpSik) . So on the drive home, the disappointment of the wildlife loop left us to write a parody song of baby beluga. We called it Baby Bison (it was not a baby but the song works better that way).

Baby bison in the deep green grass

Turn around and show us your … Sass

Heaven above dirt below, just a little bison on the go

Baby bison-n-n-n-n, baby bison-n-n-n-n 

Is the grass warm? Is your mama home?

That .. makes .. me .. so .. happy

That was the main thing that made it in the book but that was not the only memorable moment of the trip.

Sadly, there were not many pictures taken during that loop

👩‍👩‍👧 Family Togetherness

The trip was a notable one as we were blessed to have Kelly's mom join in. She joins us on about every third or so vacation. This was the first one where we were all in the same van. It was tight in packing but not crowded.

We started the vacation by visiting my Mom in Chicago. When we do road trips, we've learned the hard way about making hotel reservations too early. We've had situations where you make a hotel reservation before lunch and then hit major traffic and are stuck driving into the night. So the only stops planned were my mom's house and our final staying destination of an air bnb in Nemo South Dakota. The trip to my mom's house was nice. The girls like staying there.

While in Chicago, we all went to Cantigny Park where they had gardens and artwork on display. As you can see from the pictures, we were and are still proponents of the effectiveness of Masks. (To my knowledge, my family never caught COVID in the years that we masked. My daughter only caught it once we stopped masking)

Grandmas & Girls

🌆 Stops Along the Way

On our road trip, we stopped at scenic points along the way. This picture is in Minnesota

One of the girls’ favorite places on the trip was Sioux Falls. They loved climbing over rocks (as you can see in the picture). We stopped here on the way to the badlands and on the way back. I say the girls but I liked exploring there too.

🥩 The Ribeye Misadventure

By the time we stopped for the night in the middle of South Dakota, options were slim. Still wary of eating out during COVID, I called the only restaurant in town and asked for three filets. The server shouted back, “What’s that?”—never a good sign. I explained it was steak. “We’ve only got ribeyes.” Fine, three mediums.

When I picked them up, the place was packed and loud, run by a crew of Jamaican servers who were friendly but clearly had their own style of cooking. Back at the hotel, we discovered “medium” meant barely cooked. Those ribeyes were some of the toughest steaks we’ve ever had. Lesson learned: sometimes road‑trip dining is more adventure than meal.

🏡 Nemo, South Dakota

On the way to the badlands, there are what seemed like a million billboards that say the “Wall drug store, 500 miles” etc. I was told that it is a tourist trap and we thoroughly avoided it.

We booked an Airbnb in Nemo south Dakota which is a really remote area in the black hills. The house was a nice house with a salt water pool. We were there in July but the temperature near the house was just the upper sixties. This made the pool time pretty cold but it was still fun. 

Danielle is doing a handstand

Destination Lived up to Expectations

As I mentioned earlier, I think our favorite parts were exploring on foot whether it was climbing the buttes or exploring the river on a scenic drive. I could drop a hundred great pictures of the scenery and the exploration but I’ll just drop a few for my memories in the future.

Beautiful Badlands - is that an oxymoron

We climbed all over with rocks that would give way

Girls with grandma at Mt. Rushmore

🌄 Reflections

If you would have asked the girls before the trip, I think they were dreading the trip. But I believe they found it was as enjoyable as some of our other vacations. Will they remember it when they're older? That's the million dollar question. When I was young, my family would take six week road trips and I barely remember any of it. I guess that is what scrap books and blogs are for. Cheers to my kids of they are reading this (whether tomorrow or years from now)