Our second stop on our South Dakota trip was Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone, Minnesota. This park was a little bit out of the way, about an hour north of the interstate, but we wanted to stop and visit while we were in the area. It ended up being a pretty neat place.
We arrived at about 3pm and had about 2 hours there before it closed. They also offered the Junior Ranger program, so my son got his book and we started touring the visitor center. We also hiked the Circle Trail, a one mile path through the park that takes you past the pipestone rock formations. There is also a nice waterfall on the hike.
After finishing up the hike and visitor center, my son got his badge and we finished up just before closing time.
I ended up creating 3 2-page layouts for Pipestone, and included the park map and photographs of the National Parks Passport stamps that we got at the park. These pages were also created using the We R Memory Keepers Shine collection, and I used a lot of red paper and accents to highlight the red pipestone we saw there. The final layouts turned out like this (please click the layout to see it larger):
From here we finally headed to the South Dakota border and made it into Mitchell, SD at about 6pm. After visiting 2 national parks, being on the road and traveling for over 12 hours and covering 555 miles, we were happy to get to our hotel and rest.
UP NEXT: Wall Drug!
Hello! I've been hard at work the last few months working on scrapbooking our South Dakota trip from last August, I finished up the album this weekend and am ready to start sharing the layouts! The album has 43 2-page layouts and covers 11 different places we visited in (and on our way to) South Dakota. The first stop on our trip last August was Effigy Mounds National Monument in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, on our way to South Dakota.
We arrived at Effigy Mounds at about 8:30am and spent about 2 hours there looking around the visitor center and taking a hike. It was extremely mosquito-y there and the rangers warned us about not going hiking without any bug spray. Luckily we had bug spray and so we braved the bugs and hiked a short 1 mile trail uphill to the scenic overlook which overlooked the Mississippi River.
In addition to the hike, my son completed his Junior Ranger booklet and added another badge to his collection!
We didn't have time to hike any of the longer trails to see the larger effigy mounds since we were heading to SOuth Dakota that day and had one additinal stop to make after this one. But this was a really pretty park and we were all really glad we stopped there on our way to check it out.
I created 3 2-page layouts for this park and used the park map, the National Park Passport stamps that we got at the park, as well as photos of several signs that were at the park too add some details to the pages. This pages, along with the rest of the South Dakota layouts, were made using the We Are Memory Keepers Shine collection. Here are the 3 final layouts (please click on them to view them larger):
We left Effigy Mounds and headed toward our second stop that day, Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone, Minnesota!
