The BADlands

During the week of the 4th of July, we headed to South Dakota for our second family camping trip. We drove to the Badlands on Sat and spent all day Sunday hiking and driving around. It was surreal! AJ did great on the all day drive there on Sat.

home away from home

RC bought a tent-trailer (pop-up) for the family while we were away in Austin. We returned home to KC at the end of May and just did our weekend trip in the pop-up. We returned to my old stomping grounds, Bennett Spring State Park. I haven't been back there since I completed my field season doing research on breeding birds in restored savanna in 2010. It was a hot muggy weekend, but we barely noticed as our AC kept the inside of camper icy cold, and we had a fridge, microwave, and indoor/outdoor grill - not really roughing it anymore :)

I drove past one of the sites, still a beautiful woodland (below), but didn't make it to my primary site. 

AJ enjoyed seeing and feeding the trout at the hatchery.

Here is our little family in front away from home!