Article courtesy of Matador Network.
Spires, hills, caves, granite faces and alien landscapes? Think twice before booking a family vacation to South Dakota’s Black Hills & Badlands. There’s too much over here on the western side of The Mount Rushmore State that the kids aren’t used to, and change is scary. Plus, all that fresh air and those wide-open spaces can’t be good for anyone.
Still tempted? You won’t be for long. Here are 18 more reasons to avoid taking your kids to the Black Hills & Badlands.
If they engaged with the world around them…well, you can’t even imagine such a scenario. How would you parent that?
You know, the ones that three million people visit a year and that took 14 years to create.
When it’s finished, it’ll stand 563 feet high. Borrrrring!
And you definitely don’t want to take your kids up Black Elk Peak or on the Cathedral Spires Trail. I mean, 360-degree views of sweeping landscapes? That’s probably just too much of a good thing.
And those horseback rides will make them stop asking you to buy them a horse every single Christmas and birthday. The worst.
The Journey Museum and Learning Center allows kids to touch, feel, and interact with many of their displays. Learning shouldn’t be this fun — or this gross. It’s better to take your kids to a museum where they can’t touch things, don’t you think?
The jutting pinnacles, ragged rock formations, and colorful spires will ruin all other scenery for them for the rest of their lives. That’s just bad parenting!
Yes, the park is free of light pollution and great for stargazing, but they’ve made it this long without an unadulterated view of the night sky — why start now? And besides, your kids may be inspired to dabble in astronomy and forget about all those video games you bought them last year. What a waste of money!
It’s not like you can store hundreds of photos on your digital camera or anything. How many photo albums would you have to buy?!
They might want to become the next Indiana Jones. Jewel Cave offers several types of tours — even one where you can go spelunking — so definitely skip this one. You do not want your kids to experience the sense of awe and wonder this cave offers.
Or they’ll want to become a paleontologist. You can’t answer all those questions about dinosaurs and prehistoric times!
Of course, you’re not going there, so what’s it matter? And in that case, don’t mention that Stan is one of the largest, most complete skeletons of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the world.
Combine that with all the waterslides and your kids will never want to come out. Terrible!
Probably best not to risk it.
Do not take them to Angostura Recreation Area, which has all these things to do. What about their homework?!
They should be learning history from textbooks instead, like every other student. You want normal kids, right?
You want peace and quiet on this vacation, right? Then don’t take them on a zipline tour at Rushmore Tramway Adventures in Keystone. They’ll practically lose their voices from all the fun.
…And we all know how much you love hearing that phrase.
