South Dakota fools the GPS

We packed up camp for the last time on Wednesday morning, anticipating the many hours of travel as we head east.  Our first detour was to travel the southern "wildlife loop" of Custer State park.  Deer, buffalo, and an antelope were all we saw, the infamous "wild donkeys' alluded us.  After stopping to ask for guidance we backtracked and were delighted to see an herd of donkeys headed down the hill toward the numerous vehicles waiting for them.  "Wild" is a slight exaggeration, these donkeys knew exactly what tourists meant, carrots and lots of attention, both of which they loved.  The kids enjoyed feeding and petting these bold fellows, it was rather cool...

They're headed our way.....

Two or three donkeys... hard to tell.

Darryn finally found a girl who would kiss his hand....

And we turned our attention to getting to the Badlands, as all good navigators do, we plugged in the name of our destination in the GPS, evaluated the suggested path, and took of with innocent trust of technology.  Some questions were raised that it was taking us to the south side of the badlands, but we thought it would be cool to travel through them from south to north.  And then there was a dirt road, but this is South Dakota.....  And then there was an Indian Reservation with a worse dirt road, but this is South Dakota....  And then there was miles and miles of dusty, dirty, bumpy dirt road, is this still South Dakota?, we wouldn't have known since there was nothing anywhere.  With trusting loyalty we followed the GPS, our road north was just ahead, no, but wait, we passed the road, what road, was there a road?  We turned around to be sure, we were sure, there was no road......  Thankfully there was farmer mowing hay along the ditch banks.  He feebly attempted to guide us, the best I could understand was "go to the end of the road, there's a visitors center".  Of we went for another 20 miles of dusty dirt road.....  To conclude the story, there is no road that runs south to north through the badlands, no matter how convinced our GPS was.  After reaching the visitors center, we realized we had another 30 miles north to the real badlands loop, we were in the south section owned by the Indian Reservation.... at least the road was now paved.

After all that, the Badlands lived up to their name in our opinion, a land that gave us bad memories.  As much as Jolene tried to get us excited about the unique landscape of nothing, it took more than that to impress this bunch of weary travelers.

Leaving the Badlands we came across a tourist trap taking advantage of the many prairie dogs in their yard.  we stopped for a close up connection to the interesting little critters as they took food from our hands.

Devan's "Freddie and Evangeline"...

Every Prairie Dog was named George according to Renae...

We hit the road east traveling the farm lands of South Dakota.  Our GPS adventure costing us time in an area with no food and with our kids expressing starving symptoms as if they had trekked the area on foot, we gleefully pulled off to a Subway, only to discover it was "opening soon".  We settled for convenience store food... there was literally nothing else for miles and miles....

Our day ended as we made it to Souix Falls, Ia just in time to see a close up of the local ballparks fireworks.  A Comfort Inn Motel, a midnight dip in the pool, and all was well....