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Jewel Cave, Badlands, and Missles!





 Jewel Cave- Is aptly named... it really is beautiful inside.  Again my photo skills can't capture the beauty.   
 We had a wonderful tour group and tour guide.  It was filled with kids- probably a third of the group was kids and they all enjoyed it and kept it funny for everyone. 

  There is another tour you can take to explore, but you have to be able to fit through this concrete block to go on the tour- the girls wouldn't have any problem!


The Badlands

Anyone that is into western novels or movies has to have heard of the Badlands.  When we realized that we were driving right past Badlands National Park, we had to revise our itenerary to include driving through it.  The layers of rock and sandstone and the formations that have been made- I just loved it.



 One thing I thought was so neat was how we would be driving and one one side of the road it was meadowland and flat and basically with not a lot of stuff, but then you look on the other side of the road and it's dropped off into these formations with so much movement within them.
 These small hills- used to be the larger mountains... simply put the badlands is a mountain range that has erroded away through many, many, many years. (I think I got that right?)

 I loved the formations, the striations of color... just beautiful!



. 

 Another add-on to our trip was the ballistic missle silo. We didn't plan far enough in advance to get to tour the command center, but we were able to visit a missle site

 Normally you wouldn't think of just driving up to a chain link fence in the middle of nowhere and walking in, but that's what we did!



Alex was bummed about missing the control center, but he enjoyed learning more about the silo and the missles.

From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump home to sleep in our own beds in our own rooms... we had a great trip, lots of sights, lots of walking, lots of together family time!  Can't wait till our next family trip! :)

Comments

Whitni said…
Wow! Love all of the pictures. It sounds like you and your family had a great vacation!
July 24, 2012 at 5:41 PM
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