We had a ton of fun in the Black Hills, but we needed to start heading home. The boys had completed their Jr. Ranger badges for the Badlands, but we were too late to turn it in before so we had to head back on the way home.
While there we saw a herd of longhorn sheep off the road and- of course- tons of prairie dogs. The prairie dogs are all over in the Badlands and the surrounding grasslands- so pretty much most of South Dakota. It's funny to see them pop in and out of their holes and run around.
While getting their badges at the Badlands, the ranger told us how they could also earn their Jr. Paleontologist badges and that Minuteman Missile had a badge too. So we got the workbooks for the Jr. Paleontologist badges and headed out of the park. Surprise! Minuteman Missile is right at the entrance to the Badlands so we just had to stop. The boys weren't too happy that we had been too late to do the Devil's Tower Jr. Ranger badge so we thought we could do this one instead.
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| A building in the middle of nothing |
They just barely opened this facility, which means they really didn't have a lot of displays. But they did have one of the chairs from the original sites.
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| Earning their Jr. Ranger badges |
I didn't even know what this was when we stopped here haha. During the cold war the US decided to have some nuclear missiles ready and waiting to launch in case Russia attacked us. So in South Dakota they made these huge underground missile "silos"- I can't remember how many. You can tour the actual "silo" but we had already passed that site and we wanted to make it to Sioux Falls before it was too late. We watched their video, earned badges, took pictures then went on our way. I don't know that the kids quite understood what this really was since you couldn't see the place where the missiles were and they don't know about the cold war. But it was interesting, and they earned another badge.
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