July 26 – The Other Dinosaurs in South Dakota, Interior, SD RV park awesomeness near Badlands, caught a toad

I’m not sure who slept that well after hearing the grain elevator and what sounded like 4 trains come rumbling through,  we did sleep.

In the morning we woke up and planned to drive through Badlands National Park. Our campground reservations were actually for the 27^th, so we were 1 day early.  But our experience had led us to believe that just outside the gates of ever y national park lies private campgrounds like KOA’s and others.

Sure enough, we just before we entered the badlands, a sign for a KOA in Interior, SD appeared, 5 miles on the other sides of the park.

And just after that we saw a sign for the Minuteman Missile National Monument. Not sure exactly what this was, but having seen a brochure for it earlier, I thought we might be able to see a missile silo or something. Sure enough, the visitor center was just off I90 and we signed up for the Junior Ranger program for Audrey and Danny. 

We got tickets for 1 hour later at a different location to see a Launch Control Center – the place where “missileers” stayed on 24 hour shifts during the cold war, ready to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

We drove to the Launch Control Center – Delta 01 and took the tour, which was interesting mostly for the elevator ride down into the 8 foot thick concrete egg containing chairs and control panels that had the launch keys to destroy the Earth.

The kids were bored by it all and Max called it "creepy".

We took another drive to see an actual missile silo – which is really just a large glass panel on the ground, below which is a (hopefully) non-functioning  Minuteman 2 ICBM.

Finally, done with these dinosaurs, we drove to the Badlands and found a campground just outside Interior, SD, a tiny town that’s been around since pioneer days.

That campground had a laundry and a small café where I sat and did work on the awesome wifi.   I caught a little white toad in the evening near the laundry but it jumped into the darkness before I could show the kids.

Sunset over the badlands was great and the milkyway was clearly visible.