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KOA Custer, Custer, South Dakota. Tachometer – 3679 miles

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This morning the kids had a treat. We went to the Flintstones theme park. It is based on the famous cartoon series from the 60’s that I remember watching in the 70’s as a kid. Basically it’s a prehistoric sitcom. Fred Flintstone was a national icon for a while.

We started off with a cute train ride. Then we proceeded into “Bedrock Village” where we saw the life size heroes of the show and their houses and shops. We saw show and then visited “mount rockmore” where Fred and friends are forever immortalized. The big hit was the immense playground at the end of the tour. Check out the pictures. We had lunch at the bronto burger stand outside the park. Cute.
Since the girls did not suffer enough in yesterday’s cave, we drove 15 miles to another one today. Jewel Cave National Monument is a small park, but the cave within is the second largest known in the world today. It is very different than yesterday’s cave. The passages and room are much larger. The rocks and geology differ as well. Many of the formations look like shining jewelry. When Shir or Orr weren’t complaining we enjoyed very much. At one point the ranger wanted to show us what I was like 100 years ago when the cave was discovered without flashlights and a candle would go out. So she turned off all the electric lighting in the cave and then her flashlight as well. Now that is pitch black. Although it lasted for less than a minute, Ron and Shir voiced their complaints immediately. Orr was to busy crying about something else.

Please don’t think we are cruel parents. For most of the tour Shir was oohing and ahing. Ron, who walked the entire half mile 750 stairs by himself also enjoyed it. Orr was a bit mellow. Earlier in the parking lot she fell on her face and decorated her cheek with a black and blue mark.

In the late afternoon we drove back into Custer and after a quick visit to a supermarket we ended up at this campground. The big hit here was the “jumping pillow”. It is a huge trampoline that is created by pumping air into a large plastic pillow. The kids went wild.

We had BBQ steak for dinner although it was a close call. I started burning the wood while the kids were still jumping. But the wood was very resilient and refused to light. By the time the kids and Paola got back the charcoal was still not ready. After another half hour we finally got the steaks on and then it took twenty more minutes to get them done. By now the nice day was becoming dark windy and cloudy. We were all set up for eating outside at our picnic table. As we were eating we could see lighting and hear thunder. Suddenly the wind started picking up. I was enjoying my t-bone and Shiraz so much that even the first few drops of rain did not sway me from my seat. A few minutes later we were done with the meal and hastily folded everyone back into the RV. It started pouring heavily and after a heroic visit to the grill, we enjoyed the yams indoors. Funny thing with this wood is that for all the trouble getting it to burn, all the rain did not put out the fire, even after one hour.

Now it has stopped raining. All are asleep, hopefully for a full quiet night.

Good night.

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 12:15 am and is filed under Big Trip, North America RV 2007, South Dakota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.