South Dakota Trip - Fourth Day, Part 2

After a morning out in the "Hotlands," as Tara would call them, we headed up to the hills in search of some water to cool off in.  This area has quite a few really cool lakes and so we found this place with a little beach and some swimming areas.  Here is Gage letting his sunscreen soak in before being turned loose in the water.  The one drawback of this place was the really sharp rocks that made up the lake bed.  You can see Gage is wearing some flip flops because the rocks were quite painful to walk on.

Tara got in on the action and got her ankles wet as she made sure Gage was safe in the water.  Gage's swimming is getting better, but it still isn't good enough to where we want to let him go much further than arm's reach away.

Gavin and Gage both made some friends while building sand castles in the more "sandy" and "beachy" area.  These guys probably played for two straight hours with these other two kids.  We ended up talking to the parents quite a bit too and they had one of the more unique stories we had heard in a while.  At first we thought it was a mom, her two kids, and the grandfather which didn't turn out to be quite correct.  It was actually the mom (~30 years old) and the dad (~65 years old).  Apparently the dad just burns it and is into all this crazy skiing and other sporting activities.  The mom said she hardly noticed that he was much older than she is, which is quite hard to imagine, but they seemed to make it work somehow.  The only regret I have from this day is that I don't have a picture of Tara's face while hearing the story about the two and their extreme age difference!

This marked the last full day of adventures for the trip.  The next day we packed up shop and headed back home.  This turned out to be such a great family adventure, and hopefully one that the kids will remember for a long time!