Additionally, it is an anomalous year when I am not pregnant, or have a nursing baby or potty training toddler, which situations all really slow down travel, or at least make it less enjoyable. This year provided such an anomaly, so we made really good time.
Our first stop was in Sioux City at a favorite park. We started going there a number of years ago, when we would take our trip earlier in the summer. Now that we have been going later, it is becoming a bit less enjoyable, as it is hot. Can someone please take a second to explain to me why children's parks are now designed with heat-radiating rubber flooring, and no trees to shade the play area? This isn't the only park designed this way - almost all of the parks that have been built in the last 20 years seem to be designed the same way. Bring back the trees, I say. And some grass would be welcome as well. And I feel like this wisdom could be generalized to address some of our more pressing cultural and temperature concerns, while we're talking about it.
Anyway. For a modern park, it does have a lot of fun stuff to do, even if it is blazing hot. (I literally had big patches of back sweat all over my dress at 8:30 in the morning. It was not cute.)
After playing for a while, we hopped back in the car to make it to Pizza Ranch by lunch time. This is such a random family tradition, but we have to stop at Pizza Ranch on our road trips. The kids love the buffet, they actually have to walk around to get their food (which helps them recover from the road), and my morale is always dramatically influenced for the better by hot food. Don't ask me why, but hot food is like a love language to me. I could probably single-handedly solve the migration crisis as long as I've had some mashed potatoes first.
After that, we hopped back into the car for a long stretch to the Badlands, where we had a picnic dinner and did a little rock climbing.
The classic.
Someone somehow parked their truck in such a way that it drove itself, unmanned, over the curb and headed down into the valley. "Luckily," it ended up capsizing before it got too far down. I do not envy them the pickle they were in.
Oey loved it. She was still not walking at this point (and only now takes a few steps every couple of days), but she was enjoying standing up and looking around, and finding rocks to throw while yelling, "BALL!"
After the Badlands, there's only a short stretch until our destination, so we got there in great time. Such a fun day to kick off our trip!
2 comments :
our current regime does strike me as rather mashed potato deficient.
Yes! My husband was just telling me he thought he'd solved "climate change": concrete!!
Post a Comment