Harrowing adventures in South Dakota - Day 12 and 13

 

Howdy from South Dakota...home to wicked weather, amazing tourist traps, outlaws, old west stories and so much more!

Taking advantage of amazing travel deals is one of the best perks to homeschooling.    You are free to travel when others are not!  We practically had every tourist destintation all to ourselves and $40/night hotel rooms.

Rapid City, SD is an easy half-day drive from Boulder making it a great 3-day destination.   We took advantage of COVID travel deals and scored a sweet, 1 bedroom suite at the Country Inn.   This hotel was awesome for the kids with a giant two story waterslide at the hotel pool.  It was hard to get them out of the hotel to do all the other fun things around the Black Hills!   

For dinner we visited the Firehouse Brewing Company.   This is a cool brewery restaurant situated in the old firehouse downtown Main Street.    The best part of this visit was the nostalgia. Marc and I ate at the Firehouse Brewery back in 2010 when we rode our bikes across the country.   This restaurant was one of our memorable highlights and fun to share with the kids.   Although this time we did not enjoy the $100 bill for dinner!

The next day we were off to explore the northern section of the Black Hills. 

On our jaunt up to Deadwood,  I scouted a "locals" only hike.   Since all the tourist caves close for the winter,  I was hoping we could find a free cave of our own to explore.    According to the travel blog that I consulted for this cave hike,  this was not a well-known or well-marked hike.   Perfect!  That's our preferred style of hiking.   However,  I didn't realize that we had to cross an ice cold thigh-deep river to get to the trail.  

We were about to turn around and find a different hike, when Marc shouted that he had found a way across.    We had to balance our way across a series of unsecured logs.  One slip and we were going down in the thigh deep ice cold water.

Marc had crossed first and then I precariously balanced on the main log as a midway helper for the kids to cross.  Crossing a log can be easy when you use momentum to keep you balanced.   Standing in the middle of a slippery log helping unbalanced kids cross is another story.

A few cusswords later,  we were all safely across accept for Tabor.  Tabor is our energetic German Shorthair Pointer.  He tried walking across on the logs and ice but fell through a couple times.  Luckily for him he only got his feet wet.  He was a good example to the kids as to why we couldn't just walk on the ice!

Once safely across the creek,  we had the next challenge of finding the right trail.   I read that there may be a bit of bushwacking to find it.   Fortunately it is late fall so there was no bushes to wack,  but instead we encountered more ice!   The trail is actually a small trickle waterfall that has frozen.  Now we have to dodge slick icy rocks on our ascent up the mountain side.   We tread carefully up the steep rocky trail trying not to slip on the icy rocks. 

Midway up the trail,  Marc stops.  

"Can you hear the water beneath us?"  he asks.

Sure enough I could hear it.  We were standing on a bed of loose small rocks covering the top of a underground creek.   It was eerie feeling, like the rocks could collapse at any moment and we would fall through.

Scaling this short, steep trail was a bit frightening,  even for this Rocky Mountain hiking family.   Our kids have scaled Red Rocks without batting an eye but this loose rock and ice trail could slip up even the most seasoned climber.   Fortunately,  somehow we all made it to the top without injury.

It was so worth the climb!   At the top of our icy creek climb was this beautiful icy waterfall and system of small caves.    We explored for awhile shining our phone flashlights in the caves to see the sparkling crystals that formed on the rocks. 

 Truthfully I had a hard time enjoying the caves as I was worried about our hike down.  It was a treacherous hike up to these caves.   The pitch had to be close to a 45 degree angle for part of it plus icy rocks and slippery gravel to send you sliding down into the canyon wall or worse.  Really,  what was I thinking bringing our kids up on this hike?   Its one thing to do it on your own but to have two scared kids in tow... oh, well. Here we are.

I thought for sure we were all going to have to slide down the hill on our butts.    Up is typically ok given that you can control your speed while grabbing rocks and small tree branches.   But going down is scary as hell by yourself - with two kids, one of who is crying about going down, no thank you.

When Lauren finally stopped crying and gained her composure,  she hiked down like a champ.  Of course she held onto Marc's hand for the first part but then she was blowing past Zach and I as we cautiously crabwalked down the icy, slippery rocks. 

Once we were safely at the bottom of the trail,  I could breathe a small sigh of relief.  Now to get everyone across that icy creek again...

I guess it wouldn't be a Leveque vacation without some sort of harrowing adventure!  This is exactly how I feel about homeschooling right now.   I'm exhilarated at the places we can go, scared to death about how it will turn out and living for that awesome sense of accomplishment at the end of the adventure.

Todays lesson is one of conquering fear, exploring the unknown and using teamwork to get the job done.