SoDak part 3 “Make Lemonade out of Lemons”
Happy Wednesday peeps! This is my final vacay post, hope I haven’t been wearing y’all out on the deets. I titled this day make lemonade out of lemons for good reason, so keep reading along and find out why.
We hauled our RZR UTV’s up north, knowing that you can ride pretty well everywhere legally in South Dakota besides highways. We enjoyed getting to ride and knew this day in particular would be extra great seeing the sights from our buggy. We were going to Mount Rushmore and driving the Needles scenic loop. So cool right?!
We take off and it’s approximately 50 miles from our cabin, we got an early start that morning knowing it would be a full day of riding. On the road there our RZR started acting weird and not running well. We chugged along and made it to a gas statiok in Keystone and my husband worked his magis and it seemed to be running better so we took off for Rushmore. We travel up the hill or should I say mountain and make it to Rushmore and park and pay. We go in and ooh and ahhh and take a billion selfies with the famous heads. No denying it was magnificent and just such an American icon, I loved getting to see it with my family. For some reason in my mind, due to watching Richiw Rich as a kid, I thought we got to walk behind their heads and it was more of a museum. I was really way off lol. We paid ten dollars and were there for 10 minutes. Like I said, I am ao glad we got to see it but I wish there was more there or why couldn’t I have went behind the heads and peered out of George Washington’s eye? Ha! The memories and selfies will last a lifetime though and I got kind of emotional thinking I may come back someday with my grandkids, God willing.
Next on our trip that day was to take a ride along this windy, pigtail road, through tunnels and look at these neat rock formations called the Needles. Our RZR again started driving bad and maybe worse this time. We were barely making it up hills and we were in the middle of nowhere. We did make it through two really neat rock tunnels, then she said I’m done. Thankfully we had our family with us and a good winch to get us off that mountain. Once we made it down to a central location in town we caught a ride with the other peeps in our group to a nearby lake, Lake Pactola. The crew aka our husbands (they hated leaving us there) left me and my sister-in-law and four kiddos with a pistol, a couple blankets to sit on and a leftover sandwich from lunch and said they would be back within a couple hours. We made lemonade out of lemons! Lake Pactola was so beautiful and the clearest water I’ve ever seen. There was people paddle boarding, playing the guitar, singing, grilling out, three legged dog yapping and it needless to say was great people watching. We probably looked like a sight! Don’t mind us we are from Arkansas. The kids swam around in their undies and we sat under a shade tree in our jeans, barefoot and shopped on Amazon. Thank goodness there was a good breeze that day and we had phone service. It really ended up being a fun afternoon and something I will always remember. At the end of the day you just have to praise God in the little victories and know there was a reason we didn’t make it to those Needles that day. I want to try and live more like that and not let minor setbacks steal my happy.
Too blessed to be stressed!
RW-