South Dakota Vacation

After much planning and preparation, We started Our family Vacation leaving Saturday Morning and driving about 350 miles to our first overnight stop at Sioux Falls South Dakota. Leaving early the next morning, driving I90 towards Rapid City , We stopped for one touristy attraction at Mitchell, home of the corn Palace! The corn palace was alot more than We expected and My family found it very interesting. Spent a little more time at Mitchell than planned so Our arrival in Rapid city was later than expected. It also was very hot across most of Western South Dakota topping off at 106F--yuck!!
Monday morning was our only planned guided tour and it was very enjoyable. We started at Fort Hayes for a "cowboy" style breakfast ,then boarded a tour bus for Mount Rushmore, the Needles Highway, Custer Park, Coolidge Lodge ? and Crazy horse and several other stops, finally ending back at fort Hayes for a chuckwagon supper and show. Long day but ,fun!
On our own We also enjoyed Deadwood,Keystone , Hill city and Custer! Katie went Horseback riding and all of Us rode a ski lift, toured the wax museum, Us adults did very limited gambling and Our kids swam in the various hotel pools and waterparks as much as possible!!
It was a very fun trip and We already have been discussing next Years!
I have a Yaesu FT2800 2m rig in our van and also brought My Handheld. I am very spoiled by the amount of activity I monitor locally- even public service channels are very active here. Most of Our trip ,the radio was very silent except for an occasional 146.52 simplex QSO. During part of a very windy road in the Black hills requiring My full attention, several local hams were on the local repeater.
Also by Salem,South Dakota while heading towards Mitchell, south of I90 I observed a QTH with about nine towers of various heights. The only Salem ham I could find on QRZ was W0SD.
Looked like an incredible contest station!
73---Tim ( South Dakota was fun,but glad to be back home)