First Fitzl Family Vacation

If you have little kids, I HIGHLY recommend South Dakota as a family vacation.
We got back a few weeks ago and the kiddos had the time of their life.

There's so much to do that's "kid friendly" and the outdoors part wasn't too treacherous that they couldn't keep up. Dad and Tricia had a bit of a time even keeping up with them.

We rented a tiny cabin half a mile away from Crazy Horse, near Custer. It was a great location to get in everything that we could. Our family focused on the environment, so there wasn't much museum time - although we did hit a couple.

We drove straight out and straight back - that was probably the worst part of the trip, due to the kids needing to be squeezed in the back. My mom (Grandma Skiver) is a pro at road trips, so she had equipped the kids with travel bags that had coloring, toys, and brain games. We also did a few rounds of Car Bingo and 99 Bottles of Root Beer on the Wall.

Day 1: Roadtrip straight into the Black Hills to catch Needles Highway at dusk.  That's where we had our first buffalo sighting!














Day 2: Woke up to head to Lake Sylvan Lake. The kids fell in love with Bouldering. B says that's all she wants to do now. We ended up driving through Needles Highway again - we went the long way this time, stopping to take lots of pictures and do more climbing. We stopped and saw so much wildlife. The kids were excited to feed the Donkey's carrots, but as soon as it opened it's mouth, Luc was so scared. I guess they're cuter from a distance.





Finally, we ended our second day at Mt. Rushmore. The kids were so amazed. It was bigger than anything they'd seen and each of them learned something and took that knowledge with them. As we were going through the flags of each state, Logan reminded us "We live in Andover and our flag is American."


Day 3: This was a big day for us all. We got up and drove down to Hot Springs - another hour in the car each way. We went down to learn about the Mammoth Site. We also stopped and went through Jewel Cave - we picked up a Junior Ranger there. B thought it was cool, but Travis and I got our workout in, by carrying the boys through the entire cave. Should've counted the steps...
 

We ended day three with the Crazy Horse Memorial light show. The lasers were awesome, but after a long day of traveling, we ended up watching from the car. B thought the Native American jewelry and dream catchers were so cool. The boys loved learning about the head dresses. We all learned about the teepees and buffalo skin. 


Day 4: We took another long journey up to Spearfish Canyon. This took me back, because Spearfish is where I lived when I did my Internship at KOTA. We spent the day in Spearfish, loving the stream, loving the canyon and doing MORE climbing. These kids were troopers as we made it to TWO more waterfalls - A total of 4 miles between them. 
Day 5: Headed home, with a 50 mile journey (on dirt road) through the Badlands. My first time in the National Park and well worth the views. It made the trip home long for the kids, but their bedtime was 8pm that day. It was an experience I'll never forget. 
 

This little tribe I have is something special. I'm so excited for more Fitzl Family Vacations in the future.

~T

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