Day 4: Rhythm on the Road

Mt Rushmore was the headline of today as we covered the ~4 hours 15 mins drive from Sheridan, Wyoming to Rapid City, South Dakota. The hotel combined with Watiki water park in Rapid City was a close second!

Saw sunrise from the overpass of the Best a Western in Sheridan, WY while holding Baby Hazel and streaming World Cup cricket. Was beautiful!

From there we made it about 75 mins down the road when the backseat crew of 3 started losing their focus (ie tantrum beginnings) on the Mt Rushmore goal their parents had clearly defined at the outset.

So, with my key google maps search term “playground near….” we found City Park in Gillette which was about 15mins ahead and was a gem of a playground. This detour plus playtime accounted for about an hour.

Then we made the remaining 2.5 hour stretch to Mt Rushmore. There were some moments of anguish for everyone and a few iPad app time extensions granted in this phase. The tension was also building as the rain and clouds moved in making it seem that we may not be able to see anything. Fueling this concern was that Whitney and I had stopped at Mt Rushmore on our individual road trips to Seattle in 2008 and Whitney has been limited to almost zero visibility of the site and a couple of months later I had had a similar experience.

So as we moved through rain and clouds so low you felt like you were in a downtown parking garage were were starting to feel this part may turn out to be a miss. We wondered if we would still make the girls walk around even if in rain and fog.

Then, as we got within 30mins the weather steadily improved the rain stopped, clouds seemed to get higher in the sky and we even caught a glimpse of a shadow. Literally within a few minutes of parking the car there was bright sunshine ☀️

The girls were impressed by the “faces carved in stone” but it only held their attention for a minute or so. Then we wanted to see if they would do the Presidential Trail which is about a half a mile circle with about half of it going up and down stairs

I had a conference call for the last part of the walk so that wasn’t helpful. But Scarlett and Nora walked the whole way, including jumping up a third of the stairs. One takeaway was that if I was not on a call I would have been enlisted to carry one if not both of them for most of the stairs going up!

Then it was an easy 35 minute drive to Rapid City. We stayed at the La Quinta by Wyndham which is one of 3 hotels directly connected to the Watiki Water Park. For $80 you get a pass for 5 people to do literally whatever you want in the water park.

We had done Great Wolf Lodge meat Seattle in January with Scarlett and Nora before Hazel was born. Whitney couldn’t do anything as she was 9 months pregnant. She paid it forward then, I returned the favor today. I held Hazel for the pool/slides time and kept watch on whichever kid wasn’t with Whitney.

The Watiki water park was great. Kind of like Great Wolf Lodge “lite” or perhaps the chilled out version and about a quarter of the size. It was perfect for us and pizza by the pool meant it was zero effort dinner and they could get another hour of “one more slide before we are done”!

Tomorrow the water park opens at 8am and the pass goes until 10:30am. So no guesses as to where we will be during that window.

Super fun day. Still feels like we are on a 7-10 day holiday with our family but I think that will slowly change when we don’t have to return to go to the office next week.

Hopefully we wore the kids out so bedtime is smooth sailing…. time will tell!