Our second stop was Rapid City, South Dakota. We visited Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument and WaTiki Indoor Waterpark. July 4th, also, fell this week.

7/5/2023

1. Southern South Dakota is a lot greener than I remember as a kid.  They’ve had rain or it is early in the season and all the grasses are green.  I remember miles of brown from childhood.
2. My husband is remarkably prejudice and a number of these he has gained as his income has increased.   He even acknowledges some of them to an extent but has no desire to limit or undo them.   I have my own set also and have found it interesting in the last few years as I am acknowledging them and for some having to set aside unraveling them because I can only do so much and that is okay.   We all have prejudices, both conscious and unconscious, and I find the unconscious ones the most harmful.  For me acknowledging them, even if I don’t have the bandwidth to unravel them, reduces the harm to others and what I am passing onto my kids, or at least I hope so.
3. Oh my god, it is tough working full time and doing childcare full time even with the older kids.  I am understanding why my two years of homeschooling during the pandemic were so stressful.  Somewhere in here, I thought there would be more time to do nothing, but all my nothing time is my job. This is enlightening because when my husband suggests, we go on vacation and I can just work while on vacation, I have a knee jerk of “No, I don’t want to do that”.  And I have a hard time explaining to him why that doesn’t work for me.  He typically has “solutions,” but they don’t work for me.   I need to plan out my responses to him when he suggests this or maybe need to draw a boundary and hold it on what I do and what he does so that we can make something like this work. I need to think about this a lot more so those conversations can be more connecting.
4. The fireworks were freaking unbelievable.  I have never been somewhere where fireworks are legal to purchase and set off yourself. In the neighborhood where we stayed, they were and our host even said it was okay if we bought some and set them off.   We did a few.  There were fireworks going off for 2 hours and not just the little tiny ones.  It was so over the top. 

Our next stop was West Yellowstone, Montana. We visited Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.

7/15/2023

1. Yellowstone is magnificent.  If you’ve never been, go and stay for awhile.  See all the tourist things with the crowds and then get off the beaten path.  Don’t forget Grand Teton.  I wish we had more time here. 
2. We need more space.  We ended up in a 2 bedroom hotel cabin with kitchenette and 6 people and two dogs.  Like other husbands, my husband somehow expects the kids to be silent during work hours and keeps yelling at them when they aren’t.  They are kids.   For this location, there was nowhere else to go when we were both working.
3. Kids really don’t need screens.  We have driven over 2500 miles, and they have used the screens in the car for 4 hours total and haven’t actually asked for them too much.  They have stared out the window, listened to music, made up games, colored and only occasionally gotten too loud.  I find they are better behaved when not on screens.  (The oldest has additional screen time, and he has milked every minute.)
4. When we stopped in St. Louis we went to our first shop with souvenirs.  3 of the 4 found something they really wanted but one was wandering the store trying to find something so he wasn’t left out.  I assured him he didn’t have to force it and could find something at the next shop.  This has led to a rotation, you can’t get something until everyone has found something from the previous round.  This came to a head today when a 7 year old really wanted to buy a stuffed animal.  However, the 12 year old had not bought something from the previous round and wasn’t with us so the answer was no.  This led to the pout face, “Come on Mom, I am so cute,” and the melting down.  I listened and emphasized with her and told her we would see the animals again at later stops.  I also realized she was likely hungry as she didn’t eat much lunch and that was 50% or more of the melt down.  Held her through being sad and off to the exhibits we went.  Biggest hit on souvenirs so far is the Dinosaur encyclopedia.  They made up an new game.
5. Chipmunks can be aggressive. In Grand Teton at their most popular hike, one jumped on a 7 year old’s leg and started climbing up looking for a hand out. She came back down the trail in tears, scared of chipmunks. (I was behind with the slower kids so wasn’t there.) I’d be scared too. As she was explaining what happened through tears, I couldn’t understand and was in disbelief until I go to the top and saw the chipmunks. Don’t feed the wildlife.