Rapid City, Black Hills, South Dakota

Picture the look on my face, when I stepped out of the camper to put my boots on and realized they were filled with water. It had rained overnight, but it was really the gusting winds that blew the water from our camper gutters into the plastic mat we store on the ground below...and filled up ALL the shoes with water. "Mom, your shoes have puddles in them!!"

I dumped them out, put some plastic grocery bags over my socks and put them on anyway. I really needed the morning walk. One of the most challenging things about homeschooling, being a mom, living in a camper and doing all of those at once is that there are precious few opportunities for space or solitude. It was not raining so much as the campground was engulfed in a cloud, so my feet ended up being the driest part of me. The morning walk was good and restorative, but the mismatch between the weather forecast we had read (75 and sunny) and the current conditions (55 and inside a cloud) put us into a funk of indecision that lasted all morning. We filled the time by arguing, yelling at the kids, and gorilla gluing pieces of our closet hardware back into place. The kids ran around, whined for snacks every 10 minutes, and kept disrupting the gorilla gluing operation.

Around noon, the cloud seemed like it was getting less wet. Marko really wanted to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse so we decided to just get in the car and drive up there. Maybe it would be too foggy to see them, but it was only a 30 minute drive. Maybe Max, who is in a perpetual phase of needing yet refusing a nap, would actually fall asleep. 

We headed out with few expectations, but friends, you are not going to believe it, the skies cleared as we drove up into the Black Hills. I'm talking it was suddenly a blue sky, sunny, warm, no clouds kind of day. That land is sacred to Lakota people and it felt like a prayer to drive up through these spiraling black rocks and aromatic pine forest. We did a quick stop at Mount Rushmore (it's smaller than I thought it would be, said Marko) and then headed over to the Crazy Horse Memorial. It costs $30 to drive in and there was a special hike taking place that day so it was very crowded. Nonetheless we found a parking spot near the entrance. Max did not take a nap in the car so I ended up taking him out to the deck behind the museum pretty immediately. (Grant me the serenity to survive this phase of his development). Laurel and Marko got scavenger hunt packets from the front desk and toured the museum with M.

Max only wanted to look at the coins tossed in the little artificial pond on the back deck. But soon a little girl came over to him, coaxing him to play with her. They were soon chasing each other around and giggling. It turned out that she was the daughter of the Lakota couple who were doing presentations at the Memorial, and she was as in need of a playmate at that moment as he was. She had her own jingle dress and took part in the presentation. Max sat down right in front of the stage to watch her. Her mom, Jessie Taken Alive Rencountre is Hunkpapa Lakota and grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation and now lives in Rapid City. She just published a children's book, works at a school, and also goes around sharing things about the Lakota culture. Her husband played a drum and sang during the presentation and shared a bit about his perspective on the historic and ongoing misunderstandings between Indigenous and European people. At the end, we all stood in a circle and participated in a friendship dance. When it was over, she gave Max an autographed copy of her book. 

It was so just exactly what we needed as a family. For me to see another mother's perspective on my child, whom I am seeing through a lens of frustration right now. To just let the kids have fun and play with other kids. To learn about another culture, not just the historical but also the contemporary aspects of that culture. And to do it all under a blue sky with the Black Hills surrounding us on every side, was very healing. Jessie talked about the jingle dresses being healing dresses and it really did feel like healing energy was flowing. 

The weather turned back to cloudy and rainy that evening. It's even colder now, but we had another great morning in Rapid City, visiting the library and randomly meeting a bunch of homeschoolers there. In the afternoon, we came back to the campground and met a German family who is finishing out a long tour of North America. They are basically following the route we just took out here, so I was able to hand over a bunch of brochures and maps and recommendations. We have to move on in order to get out of the path of winter weather, but am definitely looking forward to my next visit to South Dakota.

Work From....County Regional Park

The last time M and I drove out this way, we did not have jobs or kids. Logistically it was a lot easier. But there are a few things we have figured out to make traveling now not just possible, but also enjoyable and fun. If we are going to be driving all day, we try to stop every 2 hours for a long break. We look for parks. If it's the weekend, an elementary school or a high school track is a good bet. Weekdays we look for county or state parks. I check the satellite view for big enough parking lots. Our trailer is only 20 ft. long and very maneuverable, but too long for a regular spot, so we usually end up parking across 4 spots. (Not very courteous if there's Little League or something going on, so we move on if that's the case.) Getting out of the car to really run around makes the kids behave pretty well when we are driving. There are a lot of podcasts we all enjoy listening to, and it's also a good time for them to work on their school work.

Right now we have to work around M's work schedule. Last night we stayed at a KOA with a noon checkout time. This morning I did some lessons with the kids, washed our clothes and got everything packed up while he worked. Then on his lunch break we drove about 80 miles to a county park near Minneapolis where we spent the rest of the afternoon. M worked on a really pretty deck overlooking a lake and the the kids and I went to the Visitor's Center, played on the beach, took a hike and did a scavenger hunt. They had a little library collection of all sorts of books about Minnesota plants and wildlife and an indoor play area. The vegetation is not all that different, although we did get to see some sections of restored prairie today. Mostly the kids are still noticing the endless fields of corn and soy that cover the midwest.

Now we're on the road again and will drive until we find another good spot to spend the night.

Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin

These giant turbines sprinkled across the corn fields were not here the last time we came through the Midwest. I remember the corn, though. We have a few wind farms in Pennsylvania and I have biked past some of them on the GAP. I pay extra for wind powered energy, mostly because it seems better than coal. But seeing them stretched out to the horizon like this really hits home how much we change the landscape with our choices.

"It's just corn and floods," Marko said. He was balking at writing anything in his journal. We ended up covering quite a long distance these past two days. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and now Wisconsin. He's not wrong, it's incredible how much corn is out here. 

M picked Wyalusing State Park because it seemed like it was in the right direction. It sits on these bluffs above where the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi. We took the interstate part of the way, and then got off on a series of two lane roads that wound through more corn fields. We pulled over to a cheese store for curds, or squeaky cheese as the kids called it. M also bought a giant foam cheese hat for the kids. We got here before sunset and it wasn't raining so already an improvement over the previous day's travels.

The park turned out to be full of things to do. A decent cell signal meant M had no trouble working. There were plenty of hiking/running trails. There are all these effigy mounds in the shapes of bears and birds around here and the kids were happy to hike around and look at them. The hardwood forest here is filled with nut trees. Hickory and walnuts and acorns were all over the place. We also went looking for our first geocache, which unfortunately was hidden in the burned out trunk of a tree and Max got so sooty he demanded a bath, which is saying a lot.

Oh, by the way, we're on a road trip. I'm homeschooling the kids and M is working remotely. More about that later, but I thought I better get started logging our journey before I forgot. 

State parks often have really late checkouts. This one is 3pm, so we'll hang out here for most of the day tomorrow. M will work and we'll probably play some tennis and go on some more hikes. The kids got these pretty cool workbooks from the ranger with all sorts of scavenger hunts and activities to do outside. Then we'll try some late day driving and see where we end up. When we went through Ohio, the turnpike rest areas actually had a dump station and electric hookups for RVs, so we might try to find something like that.