Our last morning in the family lodge was a quick one. We scarfed some breakfast, said our goodbyes, and got on the road. We weren’t doing the drive back to the Twin Cities in one shot like our drive out, but we wanted ample time to enjoy our main goal for the day - Badlands National Park.
As I mentioned on my write-up from the drive out to the Black Hills, one can just catch glimpses of the Badlands from I-90. Conveniently, there's a scenic loop just off the interstate - South Dakota Highway 240 - that lets you enjoy the Badlands scenery without driving very far out of the way. (It must be said that if we had more time we would have gone hiking or in fact gone out of the way to explore the less visited areas of Badlands National Park. With a lot of driving in front of us, this was a good way to experience the park as best we could.) While every lookout was of course very busy, the driving itself wasn’t bad. People were much more sane than on Custer State Park’s Needles Highway.
If it wasn’t for the impending storm rolling in (which did catch us just as we were finishing the scenic drive), Dr. S and I could have just stayed at each overlook all day soaking in the scenery. Words can’t really describe it… so here’s a picture dump.
We got back on the interstate system heading west, then north. To change things up a bit for the drive back - so we didn’t see the exact same eastern South Dakota / western Minnesota scenery - we took a different route, with Brookings, SD as our overnight town. A strong thunderstorm caught up to us a half hour outside of town, but thankfully ended basically when we arrived at our hotel. We checked in, caught a bite to eat, and settled down early for the night.
Day 6
Honestly, there’s not much to say about our last day of the trip. We had a decent breakfast in the hotel and got on the road. It was just uneventful driving. Well, except when we drove through a swarm of some kind of insect. The windshield was peppered with big splats. Yes, that was our excitement for the day.
We did stop briefly in New Ulm, MN, in hopes of hitting up another knitting shop. We couldn’t be sure from what we found online, but it seemed like there was one in it’s downtown area. Well, maybe there was at one point but not anymore. We hit up the local Burger King for lunch (which wasn’t the greatest Burger King) and hit the final leg for home. Of course we hit some traffic, but we finally made it back home to a cat who was very happy to see us again.
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