Bisha's Adventure Blog: Lucy Does the Wild, Wild West

As we continue to on our rampage to explore every nook and cranny of the West, we headed to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Devils Tower in Wyoming. Climbing Devils Tower has been on the list of climbing destinations for many years, thanks to the inspiration of our dear and loyal friend, teacher, and confidant, Jeb. Lucy and Jeb hadn't met before this trip, so it was a particularly special climbing adventure.

This was our longest "infant in lap" flight yet. At this end of this trip we realized Lucy the Adventure Girl has now flown on 18 planes. She has been to 14 states, over 15 National Parks/Monuments and has been to so many rock climbing crags I wouldn't even know where to start counting them. I was less nervous for this trip than Utah, as we have spent the summer traveling and packing up to go climb over almost every weekend. We had also flown to Utah and spent lots of time in the car, so I was confident with my bag full of novel games to keep Lulabean occupied. She LOVED covering her limbs in hairbands from the Dollar Tree. Gel window clings were another hit. Stacking dolls were fun, until they were thrown all over the plane :-), but it was a good activity to have in the hotel. I got a new peg board that is plastic instead of foam and works much better. I also made a photo album on Shutterfly with a coupon for a free hard cover book and this gave us lots of stories to talk about. I think I will make a book from every trip we take and occasionally from every day life to keep as memory books, but also stories while we travel. Colored q-tips into a spice jar worked nicely (until she wouldn't stop shoving them in her ears). Lucy is really into buckles and zippers right now, so two different sized dog collars from the Dollar Tree were a great game. Once we finally figured out how to effectively use the Kindle Fire, it was a nice chance for everyone to zone out and have some peace and quiet. She will only watch for about 6-8 minutes and isn't really into the headphones yet. I was feeling terribly guilty at first, but that faded over time. Sometimes both parents need to do grown-up and the kid needs a virtual babysitter. The Kindle disappeared into my backpack for an e-reader for school as soon as we got home. I do want to download some games on it for times when we are in the car, but it will be used exclusively for travel.

When your gate moves back and forth three times
ten minutes before your take-off time, Dah gets stuck
carrying EVERYTHING, including the carseat and
a second blue hiking backpack because we were
running too late to check them at the front desk.
Quote Jim, "I am an abused man."

The first part of trip, while enjoyable, won't go on our top ten list of favorite trips. The Black Hills are a remarkable wilderness with rock formations that jut out of the prairie unexpectedly. The beauty is breathtaking and the rock climbing is endless. The weather is unpredictable and the tourist traps are endless. We did enjoy ourselves, but really missed having an RV. South Dakota is not an extremely populace state and there was no way to rent a roving home for this adventure trip. Having to drive back to the overpriced Motel 6 every day was annoying. Not cooking was tiresome. And entertaining a toddler in the car for hours a day is just exhausting for everyone. We didn't even pay the $11 to go into the Mount Rushmore National Monument parking lot. Instead, we snapped this photo from the road. Check.

That being said, we think we will a plan a trip to go back when Lucy is a little older. Custer State Park was incredible. Sylvan Lake, a popular spot in the park, offered deep water soloing that we didn't know was there. Lucy had a blast kerplunking sand into the water and could walk around a good portion of the lake at only waste deep. There are many moderate, short and medium length hikes. We got hailed out of the park out first visit and thunderstormed out the second visit, so we called it quits. We didn't get to climb in the Needles because we didn't have a climbing partner and we finally did, the storms rolled in yet again.

Our first adventure in the Black Hills was Wind Cave National Park. This cave is as known for its boxwork as this mama is known for her refusal to go in caves. Luckily, Lucy was so overcome with excitement and energy that I didn't have a chance to notice I was in a cave. She bounced the entire way the cave. It was terribly difficult not to touch the rock and she would bend over, get one inch from the walls of the cave with her hands and then say, "no, no no." She would look up and point and yell, "CAVE!" I am glad we took her to do this unique hike in a National Park. Unfortunately, it wasn't that awesome of a cave. The boxwork is pretty cool, but that is the only feature of this cave. It is full of intricate and complicated networks of paths, but, thankfully, we didn't really get to experience any of that. Jewel Cave is the only other National Park/Memorial/Monument we didn't see in SD. Lucy has to be able to walk completely independently through that cave, so we will add that to the list of things to when we go back.

We stopped at a place called Evans Plunge on the way back to Rapid City. This is a warm mineral spring fed pool built in 1980. This was really fun. They had a frog slide in and a shallow pool for Lucy. They had three water slides for big kids and grown-ups. There are also six gymnastics rings suspended over the water. Jim made it the whole way across on his second try. I made it to the fourth ring with no luck to make it the whole way, though I can't be accused of not trying. Lucy cheered us on and had a good time playing ball, sliding down the frog tongue and jumping in from the edge. It was a unique experience and really neat place.

Don't get me wrong, we did our fair share of expensive touristy attractions and we enjoyed most of them. Reptile Gardens was probably everyone's favorite. They have an incredibly large and impressive collect of reptiles, including giant tortoises and crocodiles or every sort. Lucy has been really in "cocodrilos" lately and was fairly impressed with these lazy, huge, archaic creatures. I would recommend this stop and we would probably go again if we had the chance as she gets older.

We also visited Bear Country USA when we got rained out of Sylvan Lake one afternoon. Lucy had a great time sitting on my lap in the front seat driving through the animal park. She was most impressed by the Arctic Wolf (poor guy, living in hot, dry South Dakota) and continued to howl and look for more wolves for the rest of the trip. She had the most fun picking up and chucking rocks in the flower bed near the parking lot.

One aspect of this trip that was so much less fun than our Utah trip was the lack of outdoor exploring available to us. There were very few moderate, 5-6 mile hikes. Most of the hikes we did we considered moderate to strenuous and they were flat walks, for the most part, that we would consider easy at most. We did a 1.5 mile round trip "hike" in the badlands, Notch Trail, and it was nice enough, but there weren't even any hikes through the red rock or the yellow mounds, the most famous and arguably the most beautiful park of the park. The Badlands is an extradorinary place and I am grateful we got to visit this park, but I do wish we had had more opportunity to get out and play. Granted, it is ungodly hot there, we had the choice of a 10 milk hike, a 6 mile hike through the prairie (no thank you) or the 1.5 mile Notch Trail Hike. The hike was a nice chance to stretch out legs and Lucy passed out in Blue backpack, so it was a win win in the end.

After the heat and the sunshine, and lots of sitting in the car, I decided we needed to head to the indoor water park in Rapid City a day earlier than planned. I LOVE water parks. It is counter to everything I think, feel, and believe. I get completely freaked out and think I am going to suffocate every time I go down a tube slide. And I can't get enough. Jim knows this and tolerates my affection for this pools of germs and bacteria. We noticed there aren't many rules in South Dakota. There water facilities and lakes are all swim at your own risk. You can go down water slides head first and there is no one at the bottom to make you get out of the way. It was crazy and fun.

This may have been Lucy's favorite part of the trip. She could easily walk into the shallow pool and figured out how to hold the net to climb on to the edge, count to three, and then jump in. This is also how we discovered she can count to three. She is particularly found of saying "do," but tolerates one and three. It was quite surprising and a product of jumping into the pool at the YMCA so many times. The rule for jumping into any water is you must count to three first (in Spanish or English). She even holds up her little fingers while she counts. She got so comfortable and confident in the water it was getting a little scary. She would go under and pop back up and just couldn't stop her legs from jumping, jumping, jumping. It was really fun to see her have so much fun. She was all smiles and laughter the entire time we were there.

Spearfish canyon saved us from another hail storm further south. We did a nice "hike" (leisurely walk in the woods with creek crossings) called Devil's Bathtub. As we hiked in we were struck by how similar it all looked to Ithaca and the falls carved into the shale. These walls are limestone and much smaller than upstate New York. We had a moment of gratitude for all of the beauty we experienced in Ithaca and continued on up the stream. The water was icy cold when we stopped at the end of the one mile trail to toss stones and dirt in the creek. I bought $5 water shoes for Lucy at the beginning of summer and have been thankful many times. She enjoyed, as always, tossing rocks into the water and watching them splash, but our adventure girl can't keep herself out of creeks, lakes, pools, and rivers. She charged right into the water, reported that it was cold, and started creek stomping. She eventually insisted we let her scale the rock dam to swim in the deeper pool. The water was so cold and she was in all the way to her belly button. We had to talk Lucy into getting out of the water and into blue backpack so she could put her pants and socks back on to warm up her icy cold legs.

Every day I am grateful to see the world one step, one rock, one new experience at a time. Every adventure is a new adventure for her. She doesn't wine because the waterfall wasn't very impressive or because she didn't get to climb every boulder she had set her eyes one. She is excited and curious about all of it. It is our goal as parents to provide her with every opportunity we can to explore the world. Our favorite adventures in the great outdoors, but we want her to find confidence and security in diverse environments and among all types of people.

We made an impromptu stop at the Spearfish fish hatchery before heading back to Rapid City. It was an absolutely lovely place and Lucy ran all over the place, stopping to say "glup, glup" and "quack, quack" on occasion when she could be bothered to notice the fish and ducks. My great Uncle Junior took us to a fish hatchery in Iowa when we were 10 or 12. I was too cool for school at the time and resented the three hour drive to get there and back. I realize now that grown-ups who love you try to make things special for you. Sometimes it takes a great Uncle Junior to help you appreciate simple things, like fish hatcheries. I hope by mixing simple, little adventures in with big exploration that Lucy will be able to appreciate all kinds of travels in her life.

Lucy and her Dah looking at a statue of a girl
and her dad going fishing for the day.

We may or may not have told Louie that prairie dogs are like meerkats.
Here she is doing her very best meerkat impression.

Adventure baby and her first time playing mud puddles.
Jeb diagnosing Jim's ailments in the background.

The real reason for this entire trip was meeting Jeb at Devils Tower. It was a bonus to have Jason and Sam along, but I have been yearning for Lucy and Jeb since the very first moment I knew this little human was joining our family. He is a kindred spirit and one of the most respectable, insightful, enjoyable people I know. Lucy was immediately drawn right to him. He was gentle and calm with her. She knew right off the bat that this man is someone special. She held his finger every where we walked. She would look for him when he went into another room. She did some rock climbing with him and he was no less than impressed with both her up and down climbing skills. He found her delightful and she found him humorous. My heart is filled with joy and happiness knowing that they have finally made a connection.

Buffalo Bill and Lucy sharing lunch.

Lucy snuggled up with Buffalo Bill.

Sharing almond butter and avocados for breakfast with Jeb.
There is not one photo from the trip where I could get them
to both look at the camera at the same time. At least we have
proof that they were there together.

Selfishly, I am grateful to have climbed Durance route one and a half times (thunderstormed out the at the first attempt). I got to hear his hilarious stories on every belay ledge, catch up with his life and share our lives, and learn from his endless wisdom. I don't know exactly how or why Jeb came into our lives, but he is a dear soul and I am endless grateful for his friendship. It felt so right to be up there on that huge rock with him. We talked tirelessly about my favorite subject, my darling girl, and he gave validation and reason to calm so many of my worries and anxieties, whether I had shared them or not. He doted over Lulabee and bragged to everyone about her climbing technique. I did share Jeb with Jim, Jason and Sam, but Lucy and I got spend a lot of time visiting with him. This is a trip that I will always remember for many reasons. Jim, Jeb, Sam, and I all got to do the summit. I would like to go back and do it again some day with Jim, but Jeb was a fine partner. The summit of a climb is a vantage point that few people get to see. I don't take this for granted. We got to add two more states to the list of visit parts of our country and stamped a number of new places in Lucy's National Parks passport. We got to see Lucy light up when we came across a mama deer and her two fawns, retelling the story every night before bed for the rest of the trip. Jim and I always grow as a couple when we travel, even more so with the added complexities of taking a little one these crazy adventure trips. Most of all, though, I will remember this as the trip as the first meeting of Lucy and Jeb.