I'm back! My family and I just came back from South Dakota. It was so much fun! We went to Mt.Rushmore, Custer National Park, Crazy Horse Memorial, Wa Tiki water park, and many other places too. One of my favorite places we went to was Mt.Rushmore. Mt. Rushmore was a breathtaking sight. We took the trail down to get a closer look at Mt.Rushmore and walked over two-hundred and fifty steps! I recommend if you aren't good with walking long distances, I would still try, but don't push yourself. Mt. Rushmore also has a gallery that tells you about how Mr. Berglum ( Creator of Mt. Rushmore.) carved the monument with his eyes closed and told his workers that they needed to let their hands be their eyes. Also Mr. Berglum practiced on a smaller rock. When Berglum died when they were still carving the monument. Berglum's workers did not want to risk using another sculptor because they were worried the other sculptor would change his design.
Another favorite stop on the trip was Wa Tiki water park. Wa Tiki is the biggest water park in all of the Dakotas! They have three giant slides, a lazy river, a toddler slide area, a smaller pool all connected into two different hotels! My brother and I went on the smaller slides first then my dad convinced me to on the big ones. When I was walking up, I told myself," It's just a slide." and climbed up the staircases to the top. When I was almost halfway up I saw the toilet bowl slide; or as my mom calls it ,"a funnel." and it looked so cool. I went to the top and asked a girl if I you had to use an inner tube on the slides or if you can just go yourself. She said you have to use an inner tube on all of them except the third one. After thanking her, I went back down the stairs and tried to convince my brother to go on the slides with me because he was down with my dad still. He finally agreed with me and we went to go and get a double inner tube. When we got up there I was nervous and excited. The double inner tube was heavy getting all the way up there but, we made it. The toilet bowl was so cool once we went down it! It was fast and exciting! After going down that one we decided to go down the next big one. It was exciting too,but in a different way. It gets really dark at one point and you're going all these different directions. My mom went down the slides too. We never did go down the third one but that was o.k. because it looked really small and it was only one person at a time. Besides, those other too slides were so awesome, there wasn't any time to go down the third one! I had so much fun at Wa Tiki water park!
On the last part of are trip, we took about an hour drive out to the famous Wall drugstore. During the Great Depression of the 1930's people on there way to California because of the Dust Bowl would stop at wall drugs for free ice water. My family and I stopped there and had lunch. We also looked around. After leaving wall drugs we set off on our way to the Badlands which is really near by. They were amazing! It was so cool to see how those rocks were carved and how big they were. We didn't go out very far because it was dangerous but, we got a close enough look. I had so much fun on our family trip to South Dakota and I'm glad I got to experience all that South Dakota has to offer!
