I didn’t sleep very well last night. I woke up at 3:45am and lay in my sleeping bag trying to figure out how to pack the tent better. On the bright side, I did. I went ahead and got out of bed at 4:50am since I knew we had a long day in the saddle ahead of us. I packed up my pillow, sleeping bag, got dressed, and packed my clothes bag before getting up to start breakfast. I had the oatmeal almost done by 5:30am when I decided to go rouse the rest of the family since they hadn’t woken up yet. The girls were very helpful. They were both able to pack up their sleeping bags and Thermarests on their own along with their clothes bags. We were packed and ready to go by 7:10am which was only 10 minutes later than I was hoping, and my last minute tooth brushing and potty stop was the cause this delay.
I mentioned before that Yellowstone is a massive park, and it took more than an hour to get to the East Entrance mostly due to the distance (~50 miles from our camp site), but also because we encountered a Yellowstone traffic jam in the Yellowstone river valley (one of the Bison herds was blocking the road as it moved from one side to the other). Some of the Bison moved right out of the road, but others just stood there until they were sure you understood that you were the visitors here, and they only moved because they were good and ready. We also lost a lot of time after leaving the park as we drove through the Shoshone National Forest canyon because of slow moving traffic and again through the Big Horn mountain range (beautiful scenery, and lots of hiking and biking opportunities for future reference) before finally reaching I-90 and it’s 75mph speed limit. Once on I-90, we were buffeted by winds whipping across the plains, hills, and valleys of Wyoming. We crossed into South Dakota around 3:30pm and arrived at our final destination which is a camp ground near Keystone, SD called Kemp’s Kamp just before 5pm. That was a 499 mile and ~10 hour day of hard driving. The camp ground was quite nice. They had grass for us to pitch our tent on, and the picnic table was covered by a wooden structure. I got the tent setup with Ellen while Jada cooked brinner. Sadly, our camp stove with the griddle wasn’t lighting all the way down the bar, so we couldn’t make pancakes to go along with our eggs. We were really disappointed. However, that gave us extra time to go swimming before heading up to the Mt. Rushmore monument about 3 miles away. Ellen, Phoebe, and Jada all took showers (no charge!) before we drove up just before 8pm.
The person we checked in with at the campground had told us about the lighting ceremony that started at 9pm, so we made plans to do that with the girls even though it was late. They were cramped up in the car so long today, it was hard to then make them go to bed. We paid our $10 for our parking permit which is good for the rest of the year (anyone making plans to visit?) The interesting thing about it is how small the faces look when viewed in the context of the park and the granite formation that they are carved out of. Normally in movies they focus in on them so much, we had this picture in our heads that they were these massive heads sort of drifting out there. It didn’t take that much from the grandeur of the place, though. We found the Oregon state flag along the walkway to the viewing platform and took a picture of the girls there (thanks, Miss Long, for the suggestion) before going down to the visitor’s center to pick up the Jr. Ranger pack. We had just over an hour to complete it before the park closed, so we all started off to get it done. They worked on it while we waited for the lighting ceremony, and they both finished it just after the start of the ceremony. It was about a half hour ceremony, and I can’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t be bursting with patriotism after it. It focused on reminding everyone that our freedoms and liberties came at terrible costs. We shouldn’t take them for granted or forget those who have fought, died, and lived to establish our nation. There were no fireworks after the lighting ceremony this year due to fire danger in the forest (Jada actually heard someone ask if the fireworks were canceled because of Obama. You know, because he secretly hates America. Thank you, Fox News), so Jada took the girls to get sworn in as Jr. Rangers while I ran to the gift shop before the barrage of people to pick up post cards and a sticker for the box.
Since we had gotten to see what we really wanted to see there, Jada had the crazy idea to try to get a room in De Smet, SD for the next night instead of camping here in Keystone one more day. That way we reduce the length of one of our travel days, and we get to see more of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites there than we were originally going to get to on the way to Sioux Falls, SD. So, Jada called up the Cottage Inn in De Smet (she found it online during the brief time we had a signal in Keystone (By the way, when AT&T says they now cover 97% of all Americans with their service, I think that last 3% all live in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota because we were almost always without a good signal)), and they had a room open. So, slight change of plans there for those of you scoring at home. As a result, this ended up being our last camping night until Colorado. On the day, I ended up driving 509 miles. We actually accomplished quite a bit, but man we were worn out.