Day 1
Due to COVID-19, about 4 days before we left, we found out they had cancelled the SAT flight to Denver, adding a second connection in Houston. We didn’t worry about, but rather had faith and it all worked out beautifully. We landed in Grand Rapids at 1PM and we headed towards the Badlands, within 15 minutes of getting off the plane. We love tiny airports. We made a little detour for the famous Wall Drug Store, known for it's humble beginnings, maple donuts, gigantic jack rabbit and "free" ice water!
In the Badlands, we checked into our cabin, Cedar Pass Lodge, inside the National Park with lots of daylight left! It was a hot 89 degrees when we arrived but we enjoyed the 16 degree reprieve from San Antonio. We saw so many enormous prairie dog fields along the highway in the grasslands. Western South Dakota definitely is the definition of grasslands.
We explored some of the rock structures, let the kids climb and closer to sunset went and saw the magnificent Big Badlands Overlook, which was such a short walk to an amazing 360 degree view. As the sun was sitting, we hiked Cliff Shelf through juniper forests where the sunset was stunning over the Badlands wall. Although it got to 100 degrees today in the Badlands, as soon as the sun went down it was instantly cool and dry. It felt so good to be outside that I didn’t want to end our night but it had been a big and long day and we had our cozy cabin beds waiting for us for a good night’s sleep.
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