Vacation Day 2 Part 2: Keystone, Iron Mountain Road and Needles Highways, and our Cabin

After Mt. Rushmore, we went to this cute little historic town called Keystone to have lunch and look around. They had some cool things, lots of shops to peek into, etc. But my favorite thing was the Historic Steam Train. It was really cool to watch. I wish we could have taken a ride on it, but we didn't have time (and it was SUPER expensive). All the kids thought the train whistle was awesome...except for Ruby. Poor Rue, it scared her every time and made her cry.

We stopped at a pizza place, and had some pretty freakin' amazing pizza. It was sooooo good.

When we got back into the van, Ollie fell asleep almost immediately. We knew if we went straight back to camp we would wake up and be cranky, so we decided to take the long way home via Iron Mountain Road and Needles Highway. This was not in our original itinerary, but I'm SOOO glad we added it in, because it ended up being both mine and Aaron's favorite part of the trip. It's the craziest stretch of road I've ever been on, and some of the most amazing rock formations I've ever seen. Not all of the pictures below are ones I took, but I wanted to give a feel for the road and it's awesomeness. And I definitely want to go back here again at some future point.

First an overview:

The view from above

The tunnels, they are one-lane tunnels. There are signs saying you have to honk before you go in them so people on the other side know not to come in too. ( I took all of these pictures)

The truck in front of us. When you drive through these, your mirrors are literally inches from the wall on both sides.

The bridges, these were just crazy. (I took the first picture)

Other incredible rock structures and scenery. (I took the first 5 pictures, and found the others to give you an idea.)

I'm not really sure how they pave the roads to be honest. But WOW! There were tons of places to stop and hike, but we didn't stop anywhere because we intended to come back on days 3 or 4 to do some hiking. We didn't end up being able to because of rain and fog (no way we were driving those roads in the rain and fog...just saying.) and I was SOOOOO sad. So, we will definitely be coming back to South Dakota at some point.

It was dinner time when we got back to the cabin. I had pre-made a batch of chicken fajitas and frozen it, so all we had to do was build a fire and heat it up, and wha-la! Dinner. It was genius, I don't know why we never thought of it on any other camping trips. It was so easy. While Aaron was starting the fire, some of our neighbor campers came over to say hello. They were from Minnesota, and had awesome mid-west accents. Actually, we heard quite a lot of the mid-west accent, and I loved it!

Aaron, Ivan, Del, and Ollie playing Uno in the cabin.

Have I mentioned that our cabin was the bomb diggety? Because it was. And all the kids slept all through the night every night of our trip. It was incredible, a small miracle really.