Holiday Road Part I

I found out long ago,
It’s a long way down the holiday road
-Theme song from National Lampoon’s Vacation

Imagine if you will a 5 year old in the most whiny and annoyed voice “Why do we have to listen to this song?”

My response in my head “Well because its from one of the funniest movies of all time, which you won’t see for about 10 years, sorry, you just won’t get it”

Actual response “Because it’s fun, and if you don’t sing along we’re going to listen to it again.”

Usually its all about the kids in our fam, but at this moment, it was just about entertaining me and my wife. Each day of our 2000 mile trip to the beautiful scenic Black Hills began with this song. The first time we played this song it was a little touchy as you can tell but by the end of the trip everyone, even our 11 year old who I don’t think I have ever heard sing before, was at least mouthing the words. Even in his school concerts, he just kinda moves his mouth, if he knows the words at all. Actually the trip west was beautiful and scenic, to my surprise. But I will give you this, the 500 or so miles we had to drive across South Dakota to get there was literally hellish. South Dakota is normally a hot wasteland, with scrub growth and flatlands, I knew this going in. Everyone always says that the drive there is terrible, nothing to look at, nothing to stop in and see etc. Well luckily we were able to close out a deal on a “Family Truckster Deluxe” right before we left.












Now, I owe it to myself to tell you, Mr. Griswold, that if you are thinking of taking the tribe cross country, this is your automobile. The Wagon Queen Family Truckster. You think you hate it now, but wait till you drive it.



We weren’t happy to be in the “Minivan Owners Club” again, but it was even equipped with a DVD player to keep the kids quiet for hours at a time, so we pulled the trigger.

About half way across South Dakota, we had to stop for gas. All day we were watching the computer in the car showing the outside temp 94,95,96, etc. About 2:00 PM we stopped in this wasteland called Vivian. The gas station looked right out of a Terminator movie.



I was waiting for someone to come running out of the store screaming “RUN, RUN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE”.

While the kids and wife ran inside, I pumped the gas. By the time I shut off the car, the thermometer read 121 degrees! I thought, “well new car, it probably isn’t very accurate”. I went over to wash the windshield, scrubbed it with the business side of the squeegee, then flipped it over to wipe it off, but it had already evaporated, in like 3 seconds. The gas station was just packed with people trying to stay cool. Mostly motorcycle riders. One was in the restroom just running cold water over her head in the sink for the whole time my wife was in there. The sun was so hot even with the windows up and AC on that I was pouring water on my left arm and leg to keep it cool. By the way, in case you were wondering, I proved that day that you cannot get a sunburn through a car window.

In just four more hours we were in Rapid City. Oooh Yeah. Checked into our resort, and unpacked our stuff in our cabin. It was pretty cool, an A frame cabin, with one bed and a cot upstairs and a full bed downstairs. It also had a small refrigerator, a microwave and a small table and chairs (and a bathroom of course). Well it was getting late in the day and we still had not eaten dinner yet, so we went searching for a restaurant. We couldn’t find anything right in Keystone, so we drove 20 minutes back to Rapid City and stopped at the very first place we saw, “Ruby Tuesday”. At this point, everyone was starving and the whining was again in full effect, along with short tempers for the adults. We found out the wait was 20 minutes, so we hunkered down to playing Game Boys and looking at a menu to decide what we were going to eat. We figured by the time we found somewhere else, it would take 10 minutes and the wait there might be the same anyway. We needed a reliable place at this point, where we knew the food would be good, and of course the breadsticks and honey butter there are top notch and you get them right away.. We finally sat down and asked for our breadsticks only to find out they don’t do that anymore! What the hell! Isn’t that their whole shtick? I mean every place has to have their ‘thing’ to separate themselves from other restaurants, or else they are just another place with bar food. Maybe they are owned by a famous sports figure, or they brew their own beer, or they have some specialty item on their menu. Also we found out that they do not have the baked potato bar as part of the salad bar anymore. So the reason now to go to Ruby Tuesday is apparently for the watered down Salad Bar, I will now put my head in a salad spinner. Well after a tall Coors light which they did bring right away, we didn’t care as much any more.



Cooooooors Light, Is the Right Beer NOW!

After dinner, we went back to the cabin and cranked up the AC, put the kids to bed and turned on the TV.
They advertised that they had satellite TV but they only had six channels (not even the locals!). And the only one worth watching was the weather channel, so we started watching that. The lead story was the hot spell in the upper Midwest, centered on Pierre South Dakota, which was almost exactly where we stopped at the hottest part of the day, on the hottest spot in the country, perhaps the hottest spot on the planet at 115 degrees. It set the all time high record for the entire state. The hottest temperature recorded in South Dakota, Ever! The forecast was a little better but not much. The whole week was supposed to be in the 90’s or low 100’s according to the weather that night, and it didn’t disappoint.

Day One



The next day we planned on staying close to Keystone. Within a few miles is Mt. Rushmore and Downtown Keystone, which is a series of about 30 tourist traps. So first thing’s first, we went to Mt. Rushmore. The park is set up very nicely, with convenient parking in new ramps, and an easy walk to the first visitor’s center. It was also very reasonable, I think it was $12.00 for our whole tribe, and the pass was good for the rest of the year. Back in the day, you could just walk up to a 30 by 20 platform in the rock about a mile away and take pictures or use the binocular thingy. Now they have added excellent trails and a boardwalk to make an easy walk right to the base of the mountain.

Then you can proceed to the Artist’s studio where you can see the original 1/12th sculpture of the Rushmore statue. But first you get to a state of the art visitors center detailing the construction (or destruction) of the Rushmore faces.


The original sculpture that Rushmore was modeled after, it was cool to see because it was from the waist up. The original sculpture is about 12 feet tall!


Another thing that most people said was a good time was the 1880’s train. It is an authentic steam train from the 1880’s. Sounds like a good idea. Well the tickets were not cheap, like most everything on this trip (they were $70 for the whole family). We got on the train in downtown Keystone and it went 12 miles to Hill city. It was very hot, over 100 degrees again and I quickly discovered the two worst things about the 1880’s train, smoke and no AC. The train was changed over from coal burning to “earth friendly” used motor oil. That’s right, the train burns used motor oil to power the 174,000 pound locomotive, not to mention the passenger cars. If you have smelled used motor oil before, you know it doesn’t smell great, but now imagine lighting it on fire, well lets just say it smelled like we were following about 10 diesel trucks. The black soot actually settled onto our sticky skin as we meandered through the valley. The train could only go about 15 miles per hour, which was not fast enough to keep a breeze flowing through the train. Not only that but there really wasn’t much to see on the ride. The views were average at best, and there were no real historical things we went by other than some rotting shacks. So it took almost 45 minutes to get to Hill city, then the kids were hot, had to go to the bathroom, and thirsty. So another $13 later we had drinks and an ice cream or candy (frozen Skittles in Will’s case). And we had another 45 minute ride back to Keystone to look forward to. I can’t remember much from the next 2 hours, I was so hot and asphyxiated from the fumes that I think I blacked out for part of the trip. I think we went back to our cabin next and rested for a while and cooled off in our AC. Later that night, we went back to Rushmore for a speech by a native American Park Ranger (Rushmore is a national park) that was surprisingly very good. He compared the four presidents on Rushmore to four leaders of the Sioux who had similar roles in their culture. Emancipator (Lincoln), Preserver (Roosevelt), Founder (Washington), and the Author (Jefferson) unfortunately I can’t remember any of the Sioux leaders but it was a compelling speech nonetheless. At dusk the park lit up the faces, which was also riveting, one of the best moments of the trip, followed by Drew saying “I have to go to the bathroom”.

Day Two
The next day saw another hot day though not as hot as the last. We made a longer drive to Hot Springs to experience Evans Plunge and the Mammoth Site.


First on the schedule, Mammoth Site. As we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a huge sculpture of an elephant with long tusks and little ears. We had to make sure we didn’t turn the wrong way at the entrance and went into Elephant World or something. The mammoth site is a live archaeological dig where they are unearthing several different animals, mostly noted was the Colombian Mammoth. As we found out quickly, the Colombian mammoth is not a wooly mammoth (ah-la Manfred in ice Age)

Wooly Mammoth ________________Colombian Mammoth

and the Elephant sculpture was actually a Colombian mammoth. In case you are wondering, African elephants are about the size of a Wooly Mammoth as far as I could tell, but the Colombian Mammoth was much larger. Actually the coolest thing we saw there was a Giant Cat-Bear. It was larger than a polar bear. It could reach 15 feet up a tree for example, so those cave-men had to climb a tree fast and high to get away. But is was quick and agile like a cat.


The giant Cat-Bear was not to be trifled with

We wanted the kids to do this thing where they can dig and actually look for bones. But when we called two days before they were booked out two more weeks. Well it looked like it was pretty cool when we read about it but when we got there and saw the kids doing it, they were basically just digging for fossil casts that the workers buried in a giant sandbox. Not that cool after all. They had almost the same thing out near the gift shop, you could dig for elephant, Colombian mammoth, or Wooly Mammoth teeth in the sand. Next: buy some stupid souvenirs, then head off to Evans Plunge.


Evans Plunge is hard to describe. Of course it begins with White Men taking prime territory away from the Natives. The land in Hot Springs is known for .................. hot springs. In fact that is what caused so many animals to be buried in the mammoth site. They would get stuck in a hole caused by a now dead hot spring. Evans Plunge is a pool that is set up on top of a natural hot spring. There is no chlorine used in the pool as the hot spring replaces the entire Olympic sized pool 16 times per day. It has a rock bottom. Like a lake, and multiple water slides. The water also stays a constant 87 degrees. Just warm enough that if you move around just a little bit it is very comfortable. We spent the rest of the day there, eating our pb&j packed lunch too. The other activity they had there were Tarzan rings.



As you can see by the picture they are a series of rings that lead all the way across the pool eight in total I believe. The only way to get across is to grab the first one with both hands, swing 3 or four times until you think you can reach the next one. Then let go with your right hand and reach quick to try to get the next one. If you made it to the next one, you now have one hand on the first ring and one hand on the next ring. Now you have to basically swing with both arms, using your biceps to arm curl your whole body weight. Get the swing far enough that you can let go with your left hand then reach quickly to the next one, rinse and repeat. I thought it looked kinda dumb at first, but my oldest wanted to try it, so we did, he was really about ½ inch too short, but they let him try anyway. Both our first attempts dropped us in the drink after the first ring. It really is much harder to do than I can accurately describe here. The only ones that were making it across were 17 year olds who weighed about 150 pounds. Whenever anyone other than those 3 boys made it across, people would start cheering, it was very odd. As the day wore on Ian eventually made it to the third ring, a remarkable feat for his age. About 4 hours later I had seen several men make it to the third or fourth ring, then I finally saw a guy about 45 make it to the fifth ring, which prompted me to say in my head, if that old fart can get to the fifth one, I can too, or at least get to two. Next try sure enough, made it to two. Next try made it to three. Then rested for about an hour, it was almost time to go, and I was determined to do better. I grabbed the first (1) ring with both hands swung twice, grabbed the next (2) with my right hand, swung three more times then reached with my left hand to grab the next ring (3). Swing three more times, reach with my right (4). Swing three more times, reach with my left (5). I can’t believe it, now I am only two rings from the end. I say to myself, I am going to give this every ounce of energy I have to make it across. Now I hate it when announcers of sporting events say “he’s going 110% percent” or some such nonsense. Of course it is impossible to give more than 100%, and how many of us have ever really given 100% of ourselves to something. It’s probably more like 90% or maybe even 95%. Well I was more determined to do this than I have been about most anything in my life for a long time. Swing three times reach with my right, grab the ring (6) made it, swing three more times, reach with my left, got it (7). Only one ring to go, I am nearly exhausted, give it five swings to try to get some extra momentum, reach with my right, touch (8), but my fingers cannot hold on, I end up swinging back on just my left hand on ring number (7), my wedding ring turns sideways, and cuts a gash into the plastic coating of the ring, For a split second, all 170 pounds of me are hanging from my wedding ring which is stuck in the Tarzan ring. I shake it free, but it is too late, there is a huge gash in my finger matching the one in the Tarzan ring. I land straight enough in the water, and look at by bleeding hand, my arms and hands shaking with exhaustion, and hear applause from the crowd. I look at my family all dumbfounded by my feat, and decide it was probably worth it.


About dinner time we decided to call it a day. We drove into downtown Hot Springs and found a decent Mexican Restaurant. After tacos, fajitas and soppapias, were are ready for the 1.5 hour drive back to our cabin. Instead of going the highway back we decide to drive through Custer State Park instead. This would prove to be both very rewarding and aggravating. One of the main goals of the trip was to see animals. Just at dusk, we entered the South end of the park. The orange glow of the sun was warming all of our moods (along with a belly full of food). Looking at the map, it looked like we should be going down a divided highway, but it was really just a 15 foot wide asphalt road with no lines on most of it. It seemed like we must be lost but all the cross roads kept coming up just as they were on the map. It started out with antelope grazing all over the hills right beside the road, and it just got better from there. It was pretty amazing to see all these animals close up, some as close as 10 feet from the car. Over the next hour we say hundreds of antelope, deer, a few buffalo, and a huge elk about 15 feet from the car. Now it started getting dark though, and we were only about half way through the park. We had a choice, continue straight through the park directly to our cabin on a road that even on the map was twisting back and forth like Christina Aguilera on the Dirrrty video.



We were dirrrrtier than Christina after the "Soot Train" ride.

Or go 15 miles east then 5 miles north then 15 miles west again back to our cabin. We decided that driving on these 15 foot unmarked roads in the dark was not a very good idea. So we drove the extra 30 miles and made our way home. The problem with that route was that there were so many deer (this is outside the park now ) that I couldn’t go more than about 40 on those roads either. My co –pilot was the spotter while I drove. We finally got back and crashed. Well the kids crashed, we had a few beers to calm us down from the harrowing drive. Day 2 in South Dakota came mercifully to a close.