Black Hills Trip - Custer and Mt. Rushmore

You guys know that we always capture family pictures during our Hoekman vacations. Fair warning that I have a lot of cute cousin + family photos to post with matching shirts to boot! 

We got up on Sunday morning and headed out for a full day at Custer State Park. Our first stop was Sylvan Lake. Parking here can be bananas so we knew that we needed to get there early. 

Our neighbors from Eau Claire took a trip to the Black Hills earlier in the summer and had horror stories about visiting Sylvan, cruising the parking lot for a hour with all of their kiddos and not finding a spot. Good news - we were able to park and we quickly donned our Black Hills vacation shirts.

This year the boys wore blue.

And the girlies wore pink. Classic! 

Our extra gal is Madison - Paul's friend. She fit right in with the rest of the fam. ;)

Here are all of the cousins together. 

Grandpa and Grandma joined the crew.

The adults wore dark gray. 

We got lots of compliments on our shirts during the visit! ;)

We went on a nice little walk around the Lake.

What a beautiful spot! 

We love Lake Sylvan!

I have never seen the Black Hills looking so green this time of year! 

We drove through Needles highway and hit the Custer Wildlife loop. The donkeys are always a joy to see and pet. Leo wasn't the biggest fan of these critters. ;)

The visitors centers in Custer are top notch - tons of great educational materials and exhibits. Leo enjoyed learning about poop of course! Roman wanted to see how close one should get to a bison {The answer is 25 yards}

We spotted our first bison of the Wildlife Loop, this big guy lounging in the sun. 

Later on we found the full herd - so cool to see rolling hills filled with these majestic creatures. 

We tried so hard to get everyone in our family on this scale to match the weight of a buffalo. Spoiler alert - we were not successful. Too many people laughing and falling off the dang scale! Haha.

The children were also thrilled to see this antelope. 

After the wildlife loop - we visited Mt. Rushmore.

As you can see ... Roman is no longer wearing his Hoekman Family shirt. We watched a video at one of those visitor centers in Custer {a really great film on the history of this space, narrated by Kevin Costner} and he leaned back into a huge wad of gum on the back of his theater seat. Uggg. Anyway - thank goodness we had a spare swim shirt floating around in the back of the van.

The children were happy to see the monument.

Here are the Storms - A Quinessential Black Hills trip family photo. ;)

There are actually a bunch of nice trails in the area! I have not really explored here before so it was cool to walk around the park. 

It was a great day! 

After seeing Mt. Rushmore we headed back to the ranch. When we got to our home base, I asked the little guys to take a picture in front our cabin. 

We stayed at a very nice property - loved having everyone in the same house and the big decks were amazing - the big girlies slept out there almost every evening {except when it rained}.

Mid-July + Headed West

Here are some updates on mid-summer life at the Storm household. 

Roman was invited to a sleep over / All Star game watching party at a friend's house so Lucy made some festive treats for him to contribute. 

Lucy is a pro in the kitchen these days; she took a 4H sponsored baking class at the high school and came back with all kinds of treats. We all benefitted from her learnings! 

Here is our girl with her Eau Claire eclairs. ;)

Roman is gearing up for football season and went with his Dad to get fitted with his uniform. They went out to eat at Famous Dave's afterwards. ;) 

Little brother wanted to try on the helmet too. 

We did some food prep as we planned to head out West for Hoekman family vacation. 

Egg bakes completed! 

This year we planned to spend a week in the beautiful Black Hills with the Hoekman crew.

Our first stop was Grandpa and Grandma's house. We woke up to the breakfast of champions - vacation cereal. 

No better way to start the day than a hot cup of coffee in a Hodag mug. 

The best part about caravanning is that we could split up the kiddos. Haha!

We were stuck with the pre-teen boys! 

Our first of many stops on the journey West was Mitchell.

Dan drove by the hospital where he was born. We were all surprised that there was no historical marker. ;)

Next up - a drive by of Gerhard and Lorraine's houses in Mitchell. 

What a fun walk down memory lane. 

Guess what - during our visit to the World's Only Corn Palace, we stumbled across a Parade. 

These guys all loaded up with candy for the drive. Haha!

What a lucky day - Corn Palace visit, Parade magic - good stuff! 

Love these little cornballs. 

Here are the big girls :)

The kids could not believe that we used to have High School State ball tournaments in this space. 

After a leg stretch and a bathroom break, we left the Palace and continued our trip West. 

The Theme of This Year's Corn Palace was the Wonders of the World - You can see the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower in the background. 

Here's the Storm crew in front of this 'A-Maize-Ing' Palace. Haha!

We stopped in Chamberlain for a roadside picnic. I had never seen the Dignity of Earth and Sky statue before - what a beauty!

These dudes enjoyed a walk down the trail - they were careful to watch for snakes. 

I just love this area - when I was a kiddo I thought that the Missouri River crossing was the most spectacular sight in the world.

So fun to caravan with these people and to meet up with them at the landmarks/hot spots along I-90. 

We hugged the prairie dogs and hit the road. 

Our next stop was Badlands National Park. 

Again, we were mindful of the rattlesnakes ;)

We explored and hiked the trails. I forgot that there is not really 'color' in these spaces! 

What a joy to be in the Badlands on a day when it wasn't 100+ degrees!

Do you see that rope ladder behind the Storm children? It led to a trail in a higher part of the cliffs. 

Unfortunately I did not make a good decision in terms of footwear so I relied on Dan to take pictures from above.

He was able to grab some nice pics.

Here is Kevin and Katie's family - they all sported Baltic Bulldogs gear on this day. I told them that this should go in a brochure or something for their school. ;) 

Here are the cousins who braved the rope ladder hike. 

Here are my sweet nieces who made poor shoe choices as well and needed to hang out with their Auntie as a result...

Hey - we still had a good experience on the lower trails.

Cheers to a good climb!

The children loved this National Park and were eager to stamp their Park passports.

We wove our way out of the park and marveled at the prairie dog communities. Our last stop before our cabin was Wall Drug.

The kiddos absolutely adored this quirky place!

 

I mean, can you even go to Wall Drug without drinking some free ice water? No way! 

Just for the record, it was definitely not 'ice' water - it was more along the lines of Free 'lukewarm' water. Still tasted good. 

We had to capture some photos on the back of the giant jackalope. 

I have some photos of these two on this same jackalope back in 2017. Blast from the past for sure!

My Dino loving boys will always remember this loud T-Rex exhibit. Same animatronic dinosaur, 2 Storm boys, 8 years apart. 

Thank goodness we didn't have to take a covered wagon west - hah!

You better believe that we stopped for an ice cream treat before leaving Wall.

We arrived at our cabin well after sunset - good thing that Austin, Mallory, Paul and Madison arrived early to get dinner going.

We had this fun vacation cookie for dessert on the first night. Yay for vacation!