We got back last week from a trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota to visit my parents. For those that are new here, a bit of history on the Black Hills for my family, because this isn’t going to be a typical travel post about what we did and where we ate!

My parents grew up at the foot of the Black Hills in Rapid City, SD. My maternal grandparents bought some land in the Black Hills before my living memory, and lived in the Hills pretty my entire childhood. As kids, we’d always spend a week in the Hills visiting my grandparents. My sister and I have wonderful memories in the Hills growing up. We’d catch and release chipmunks, go camping, feed the deer, hike (I hated hiking growing up, though), and just generally lived outside in nature for a week.

Years ago, my parents bought land in the Hills as well, and in 2014 built a cabin on that land. They spend their summers living at the cabin, and the rest of the year they live in Kansas City. Thus began our own family annual pilgrimage to the Hills once a year.

We usually do this yearly trip with my sister and her family. Our kids are close in age and adore each other. And that was the intention again this year until, #COVID hit their family a few days before we were supposed to leave. We missed them a lot, but had lots of fun getting one on one time with ’Mimi & Papa,’ as my parentsare known to our kids.

So that’s a really long way of saying that we don’t do any normal tourist things, generally speaking, on these trips because we’ve all seen Mount Rushmore more times than we can count. We don’t go out to eat. We just hang out in nature with our family.

And I take a lot of pictures, of course.

So, this is our family trip in pictures!

The Black Hills is a whopping 11 hour road trip for us. It takes us 12 hours to get there, though. We get up super early, and get on the road before the kids fully wake up. I pack us a picnic lunch, and we stop midway at a park and eat our lunch and play to get the kids’ wiggles out, and then jump back in the car for quiet time/naptime and the final push to my parents’ cabin.

We arrived at the cabin, and Harrison had just been there for a week with his cousin a few weeks before this. And he immediately spotted TURKEY FEATHERS! And he was pumped to show his cousin!

Our first full day there, Mom & Dad were tiiiiiired. So we bummed around the cabin and let the kids play outside all day.

There was lots of mowing, water play, car races and…

Tractor rides! Baby J’s favorite!

Look at these little cuties freshly up from nap!

And how about these carbon copies of each other…

Our second full day in the Hills was the FOURTH OF JULY!

We got up and had breakfast, and then headed to a little town at the base of the Hills for a 4th of July parade. Neither boy had ever been to a real parade, and it felt like the entire town was IN this parade. There was the mayor, the local funeral home, the local heavy equipment rental business, the fire department from three different counties was there, so many high school reunion classes, and more. It was so fun, and Harrison was thrilled when most of the “floats” threw candy at the kids.

JACKPOT.

We had amazing smoked ribs for dinner and bombpops for dessert!

These little boys wore the Red, White, and Blue!

And we did some sparklers to round out the holiday!

The following day, we enjoyed coffee on the porch, and my little gentleman picked me the most beautiful bouquet of lupine and weeds. Love his little heart.

It’s the first flowers my little boy ever picked for me. I distinctly remember my MIL giving me a card before Harrison was born, probably for my baby shower, about how little boys’ first love is for their mama – that they’ll pick their first bouquet of flowers for their mama. That their mama will be the first woman that they love. And somehow, that always stuck with me. How special to be these little boys’ first?

I pressed one of those flowers and brought it home for me to be framed for my bedside table. 😊

I’ll continue the trip tomorrow!