The Badlands were an unexpected, awe-inspiring sight. Not a single picture could or has ever done it justice although we certainly tried through a myriad of lenses yesterday. Exploring that grandeur was not only a highlight of this trip, but certainly one of all my travels. Surprises like a field of wild prairie dogs and vistas around every bend will not soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n
What I do hope to forget is the rather tragic fly situation going on in western South Dakota. Being amongst its residents for the last week, I feel like they are a proud people–private by nature and not really apt to share their plight–but the insect situation is approaching dire. This plague is well past Pinterest solutions and in need of its own hashtag. Send fly traps.<\/p>\n
Our campsite succumbed and we tried the penny in the plastic bag of water trick–the flies broke them open and used the money to buy booze and party favors and invited more friends to the party. In desperation, we bought some weird contraption that–pardon my graphic and crude description–smelled like diarrhea but was so effective that we were willing to trade off the odor for the relief. Glue strips hung from the rafters and again, were absolutely disgusting, but so are gross flies. We were able to leave them behind, but the folks of SD need help, people.<\/p>\n
We made the trip to the famous Wall Drug for their free ice water and 5 cent coffee. <\/p>\n
After a couple of cups of that, the nickels might have been better spent in the plastic bags of water.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Badlands were an unexpected, awe-inspiring sight. Not a single picture could or has ever done it justice although we certainly tried through a myriad of lenses yesterday. Exploring that grandeur was not only a highlight of this trip, but certainly one of all my travels. Surprises like a field of wild prairie dogs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[2],"tags":[55,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NIOM-b8","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":688,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/07\/14\/day-6-the-dads-land-in-the-badlands\/","url_meta":{"origin":690,"position":0},"title":"Day 6–The Dads Land in the Badlands","date":"July 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"We are almost to the one week mark of our adventure and today we met up with the Dads in the Badlands of South Dakota! This amazing landscape will be thoroughly explored and enjoyed all day tomorrow. Yay! However, we weren't all together an hour before the kids started to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":685,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/07\/13\/day-5-and-the-strange-beauty-that-is-sioux-falls\/","url_meta":{"origin":690,"position":1},"title":"Day 5 and the Strange Beauty that is Sioux Falls","date":"July 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Walmart Cashier: Welcome to Walmart! Did you find everything you were looking for? Thelma: Yes, thank you. We don't need a bag for the Venus Flytrap. Cashier: (Scanning eclectic mixture of consumer goods.) That is sure a lot of Band-Aids and Neosporin you've got there. Thelma: Four-square accident. And I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":778,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2018\/06\/24\/hallsfallsmallsandbaseballs\/","url_meta":{"origin":690,"position":2},"title":"#HallsFallsMallsandBaseballs","date":"June 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"It is time. Well, it is time to begin the countdown to the time of actual departure, anyway. In this episode, Thelma and Louise, Butch and Sundance, and the 11 offspring and travel companions will embark upon this year's offseason adventure: The Halls, Falls, Malls and Baseballs 2018 Tour. 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For this vacation, that point came when I had to wrestle the rhinestone-studded tweezers from Louises' hands when I feared she was going to stab a stranger who tried to mansplain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":807,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2018\/07\/04\/day-three\/","url_meta":{"origin":690,"position":5},"title":"Day Three","date":"July 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"We continued our own group heatwave with a trip to the ballpark on Day 3. Translate that to mean we certainly make a splash wherever we go and most of the time we're a hot mess. But the unsuspecting folks with the Cincinnati Reds were amazing hosts, treating us to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/IMG_8204-e1530666006224-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":691,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}