Why I Loved South Dakota

I am writing this blog to share some pictures we took while we lived in the beautiful state of South Dakota.  I am inspired to write this because of the milspouse Friday Fill-in answer, where would you not want to be stationed?  I couldn’t believe how many people said South Dakota…now North Dakota I totally understand, but trust me, South Dakota was wonderful! 

I was born in Ohio and we moved to SW Florida when I was around 9. Grew up there, then went and lived in Northern Florida while we attended college. I hadn’t really been anywhere out west, so when we found out we were going there, I have to tell you, I was a little disappointed.  I was thinking we were going to be living in the middle of nowhere with farmland all around us and I thought it was going to be flat as can be, just like FL. 

We drove there in 2 separate cars, I followed Dan the whole way and it took 3 days of travel to get there.  We checked in to our hotel and went to find where our apartment was.  It was on what is considered a nice, quiet part of town and the grounds were so beautiful, I’ve never seen anything SO green. Here are a few pics of the apartment grounds.

This area is not flat, it’s a pretty hilly place.  Rapid City is also close to the foothills of the Black Hills, this made for a lot to do in the winter or summer.  Speaking of winter, winter’s weren’t that bad. Yes, it snowed, we got a few blizzards which shut the town down, but the weather was just so amazingly unpredictable, I loved it.  One day it was 80 degrees, the next day we had a blizzard that would shut everything down. Next day, sun would come out and melt all the snow.  I’ve never driven in snow until I moved here, so I was very nervous about this, especially with the hills. The snow never stayed on the ground long though, that’s what I really liked.  Now, the Eastern part of South Dakota always got so much more snow.  Rapid City did get cold, I remember once it was –40 below including wind chill, but it’s not like that for months on end. 

The rest of the pictures are just places around the area. We went on a lot of hikes here, fished and just loved to drive around.

Sylvan Lake

Needles Highway

In Custer State Park there was a road called the Wildlife loop, lots of Buffalo, deer, antelope, prairie dogs, fox, donkeys, elk…

View of Mount Rushmore

Then you have the Badlands National Park close by

Stairs we climbed up while hiking in the badlands

Going back down, they were pretty steep!

Devil’s Tower was close

Blizzard in May! Driving down the Road

My Car! The wind was really blowing that day. As you can see how much the snow is off the side of my car

Stream that ran through the city.

Beautiful sunny day

Harney Peak Hike. See that little tower on the top of the photo? That’s Harney Peak, about a 2-3 hour hike, just to get there.

This was only about 25 minutes into the hike. This was the second time we hiked it though, first time it took us about 3 hours, this time only about an hour and a half to get up there. You can barely see Harney Peak in this picture, it’s in the top right corner.

At the top, we always packed a lunch when we went and ate it while up here. Beautiful views.

Never forget peanuts for the chipmunks!

This is the “tower” you were looking at in the above photo’s.

The skies were simply amazing

Devil’s Bathtub. This was in Spearfish, SD on private property.  We heard about it from many people and found it online how to get there. Since it’s on private property and you have to “trespass” to hike on it, there aren’t too many people here. It' truly is a hidden treasure. On this hike we had to cross through the very cold stream about 15 times. It’s a beautiful hike, once you find the starting point, you just follow the stream North and figure out a way to get from one side to the next. It’s fun because you actually have to think about where you have to go. You keep going until you see something that resembles a bath tub.

Here it is, Devil’s Bathtub

Well, those were some of my pictures from good ol’ South Dakota.  I loved it there and hope that we will be back there again one day.  The people out there are so kind, I had an absolutely amazing job and it was beautiful. Can’t get any better than that! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!