road tripping in the usa

  Alright -- last post on the Badlands!!  Hahaha.  Here (as promised) are a series of pictures taken with the "real camera," interspersed with the top 5 most frequently asked questions according to the national park service website...   Top 5 FAQs 1) Why is it called the Badlands? The Lakota people were the first to call this place "mako sica" or "land bad." Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain led to this name. In the early 1900's, French-Canadian fur trappers called it "les mauvais terres pour traverse," or "bad lands to travel through." Today, the term badlands has a more geologic definition. Badlands form when soft sedimentary rock is extensively eroded in a dry climate. The park's typical scenery of sharp spires, gullies, and ridges is a premier example of badlands topography.    2) How long does it take to see the park? It depends. To fully experience most of what the Badlands has to offer, i...

   { That sky, though! } Wait a second -- are we still only on DAY TWO of recapping this trip???  Hahahaha.  What can I say -- this was one PACKED road trip!  Day Two (a Saturday) was our first "long" drive of the journey out west, and it was a rough one.  Certain children cannot handle being confined in the car with nothing to do for several hours at a time, and despite having come prepared with Kindle Fires and iPods and downloaded movies and games and audiobooks and headphones and regular books and notebooks and those road trip binders filled with license plate bingo and restaurant sign bingo and a complete itinerary of our trip, it still wasn't enough to structure Ethan's time in a productive way for our drive from Nauvoo to Sioux Falls, SD.  The only thing getting ALL the kids through the day was the promise of swimming at the hotel once we got there for the night.    Yay!!! Finally getting out of that carseat!!!  Falls Park We spen...