Had a great night of sleep, we kept the trailer at 75 with the AC on and all windows closed. Carol preferred that as there’s less outside noise and with the road near us she had a harder time sleeping the night before. Today is going to be a hot day, and it will get cold on Monday, then it won’t warm up as much again, likely for quite a long time, so we decided we’d go back to Sylvan Lake for the day, swim, hike, picnic, etc. We’ll leave the regular hiking parks for the other days when it’s not as warm.
Our trip to Sylvan Lake was awesome. We did not allow electronics on the ride there and the girls entertained themselves by looking at the scenery, then singing the presidents song. They sure know the Mt Rushmore presidents now. It was a fun ride there and everyone was in good spirits. We arrived there just in time to beat the morning rush, and found a parking spot right away, but didn’t look promising as we drove in. We packed all our stuff and went towards the lake.
I had a backpack and our food cooler on my back, food cooler was dangling connected to the back pack. We started following the girls as they wanted to decide which direction to take on the trails, so off we went. They saw an area that had a lot of rocks, and the path was into the rocks, so they followed that.
We kept going, and going, and were going downhill for a while thinking that trail would quickly turn around and come out on the other side of the lake, but….
…It kept going… hahahah.. eventually we asked someone we crossed how long the trail was, and it was 3.5 miles! We had just started and had gone maybe .5 a mile. But, we kept going.
It was fun, really nice time together to “beat the trail” as at some point like over 1 hours into it, the girls were tired and we were rationing water.
Of course we kept going and just tried to make some stops here and there to eat fruit, or a piece of sandwich and have a sip or two of water. I promised the girls they’d get Ice Cream twice for finishing the trail. It took us almost 4 hours to finish, and we were happy to get to the lake on the other side, tired and accomplished, and impressed the girls handled it so well.
Maggie was along too, hahahah.. Carol had her in her purse most of the time, but a few times had her walking around as well.
We went straight to the store to get Ice Creams, Water and Beer. We sat there for a good 20-30 minutes just relaxing, having our drinks. It was a nice prize for conquering the trail.
From there we decided to hang out by the beach so the girls could go in the water. Bia and I went ahead and found a spot in the shade where we could see the beach, and Bella and Carol came later as they were talking to a Park Ranger. Kids played in the water a bit, but not much as they said the water was very cold. Weather was awesome though, warm but not too warm, breezy and relaxing. We sat there for another 2 hours or so. The girls explored the area a bit more, went up by the rocks and climbed a bit, played, etc.
And we called it a day there, very nice day. Went back to our “home”, all showered, had dinner… Carol made pasta with beef and corn, and we devoured it all. Then after dinner we went to Rapid City for Ice Cream, pretty good ice cream place called Armadillo, which was a great top off for the day. Driving home and going to bed was uneventful and we all crashed as we hit our pillows.