Great Plains Road Trip

We have just returned from our Great Plains road trip.  We had a wonderful time exploring the state of South Dakota and also parts of Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming.   We did so much that it is going to take several posts to cover it all.  I'm going to start, though, by describing the loooong drive to our destination.  In order to reach the Black Hills / Badlands area of South Dakota, the kids and I left at noon on Friday, drove all of Friday and all day Saturday, met up with Brian in Omaha on Saturday evening, and then drove most of the day Sunday.  We spent a lot of time in the car, and most of the scenery looked like picture above- flat, grassy, corn, cows.  To break up the monotony, we made short stops to look at road-side attractions.  This gave us a chance to get out and stretch a bit and to see something other than flat grassland.

 Our first little stop was in Omaha.  Brian had flown in here, so we spent the night.  Once we met up with Brian at the hotel, we made our way to the historic "Old Market" area of Omaha which had lots of good restaurants and shops.  We were only in Omaha for a short time, but I liked the vibe that I got from it.  It is definitely a place that I'd like to go back and explore more thoroughly.  Anyway, Omaha is on the Missouri River and we noticed a little park and pedestrian bridge as we drove back to our hotel from our meal.  The next morning, we decided to go and check out the park before we left Omaha.  The bridge that we saw connects Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa and we thought it was neat that they had the state line drawn into the bridge so that you could see that you were standing in two states at once.  

The path that we took out west matched up in many places with the path that Lewis and Clark took, so we saw a lot of "Lewis & Clark" sites along our way.  As a matter of fact, our second stop was at the Lewis and Clark State Park in Iowa.  We stopped here because of it's proximity to the Interstate and because it had a replica of a keel boat- which is the kind of vessel that Lewis and Clark would have used.  The kids ran around a bit and checked out the boat.  They were also having some type of demonstration going on at the park, so we got to see people dressed in period clothing and some old Native American and European artifacts.  

 Our third stop was in Sioux Falls to see the falls.  These were beautiful.  The falls were right in the middle of the city and there was a nice little park with walking paths.  This was a nice stop.

 Our forth and final pit stop was at the Corn Palace.  This is basically a basketball gym that they have decorated with murals made by corn cobs.  The murals were cool, but other than that this place is a total tourist trap.  Not my favorite.

After a long, long drive we finally made it to our cabin in the Badlands.  This view from our back porch made the trip worth it.