Sunday, August 6, 2017

Day 5 Vacation-Black Hills Adventures



After Mt. Rushmore, we did a few other tourist activities in the Black Hills. We visited a weird place called Cosmos where they used some kind of optical illusions to make you senses feel off. It was our least favorite activity of the whole trip. Since the sense of gravity was all off, Nathan took a big fall in the cabin and cut up his leg. Of course, I had no band-aids in my purse and the tears were flowing. Why did I not think to put in bandaids ? Probably because I had so much other stuff in there. 

The gift shop included some colorful rocks which are Elizabeth's favorite thing ever. 


It also included this hat which is Nathan's favorite thing ever. Neither kid got anything from the souvenir shop this time. Sorry guys. 


Here was inside the cabin. I had a hard time taking pictures because I could barely stand up and felt dizzy and kind of nauseous. The only person who walked out of this place ok was Jeremy of course. Elizabeth and I recovered pretty quickly, but Nathan was pretty upset about his cut. 
The kids could lean really far forward and not actually fall. It was weird.  The best part about this place was that we paid extra money so that they could hunt for a geode and then crack it open! More rocks! 

After the weird house, we drove up to Reptile Gardens in Rapid City. We spent hours there and the kids had a great time. They had all kinds of animals there. Not just reptiles. 




My favorite part of the visit was the alligator show. It was really cool. There were like 20-25 alligators hanging out in this pool and the tour guide was in there trying to feed them and give us information on alligators. It was fun to watch how fast they moved when the saw the food. Otherwise, they were as still as the dead.  The kids loved when the alligators would snap at him. 



They had the cutest little area with prairie dogs! They were very well fed prairie dogs. 

Here are the huge tortoises. 


Nathan hanging out with the 111 year old tortoise. 


They had a whole indoor area with all kinds of neat birds. 


This alligator was named Maniac and he was HUMONGOUS. 

The kids and Jeremy also spent a bunch of time looking at the snakes. They had a lot of those too. Sorry, no pictures of those as I sat and rested. 

We went back to my cousin's house and had dinner. My cousin was so nice and thoughtful to make sure that what we had was all safe for Nathan. It takes so much effort to feed the kids safely and she really went out of her way to make sure they were included. Of course, the kids fed the deer. Then,  the kids wanted to head out riding again. They just loved that. 


Down the road they go! 




The state had done some logging and messed up some of the roads. They thought the side by side could maybe make it up and over this weird dirt hill. Nope. Got stuck and had to get pulled out. 


Elizabeth was such a crazy driver!! She kept trying to run into trees and was swerving all over the road. 


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