Trolleys, Princesses and Dinosaurs: Oh, My!

Somehow the thought of being home with my four daughters by myself for four days seemed daunting. Perhaps, not daunting so much as just really boring. Not that my kids are boring. But somehow, being home without my husband there--that seemed boring. So when Dan told me he had to go to a three-day meeting, I decided it was time for me and the girls to go on another adventure. Somewhere really far away. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere like Sioux Falls.

Our oldest daughter, Annika, was the only one who had been to Sioux Falls, S.D., before when she went to the zoo with her second grade class last year. The town was just far enough away to be a true trip, but not so far that I had to endure "Are we there yet?" into insanity and beyond.

After passing miles upon miles of windmills, we arrived in Sioux Falls just in time to see fighter jets doing some practice drills. I thought it was cool. My kids thought it was loud. So we didn't stop at the airport to watch them; we continued onto our hotel.

I had called about a week in advance to make reservations after searching prices online. The hotel was willing to match the price I had seen on Oribtz.com; however, with the hotel making the reservation, we were able to change the room if we needed. The gentleman taking our reservation upgraded us to a suite for free which meant we had a couch in a room that had a hide-a-bed so we had sleeping space for five.  

Now, every hotel we stay at is "our hotel." So we have several hotels that apparently we own, according to my five-year-old. The hotel, a Holiday Inn Express, happened to have recently opened and had a cute splash pool complete with dinosaur slide, "mushroom" water sprinkler and a hot tub for me. They also offered a free breakfast, complete with a little machine that made pancakes from scratch in about a minute.

For dinner, we had pizza. Of course, we had pizza. When children are asked what they want for dinner, nine times out of 10, they will respond, "Pizza." The other times are either McDonald's or tacos. The hotel recommended Boss' Pizza. So off we went.

After dinner, we caught the free trolley from Falls Park and traveled through the downtown area. We got off briefly at the Washington Pavilion ( a great hands-on kids' science museum) so the girls could try to lift a Smart Car...which they could because of a really long lever attached to the lift on which the car was parked.

We then walked through part of the Sculpture Walk Sioux Falls has during the summer and visited Child's Play toy store which was really neat. They had a lot of toys, books and even a tiny scooter that the girls could play with in the store. There's also a used bookstore in town I'll have to visit next time along with a really cute downtown coffeehouse, Kaladi's, that closes at 4 p.m.

Fortunately, we caught the last trolley back to Falls Park (Bus Driver Dave had been keeping an eye out for us), a really beautiful area where the Big Sioux River flows through the carved quartzite. (For photos of the park, go to http://bit.ly/FallsPark.) The best part of the beauty was the fact we could actually play on the rocks. My kids were happy here for at least an hour until I made them go up to the overlook tower at dusk. Good tennis shoes are recommended for the maximum amount of climbing fun.

We returned to Falls Park the next day for a picnic before we headed out to the Great Plains Zoo for the Dino-Roars exhibit. It also was Party for the Planet day where the zoo encouraged kids to dress up and, of course, my four princesses were more than happy to accommodate. We ran into Annika's friend Janessa Nelson and her family. Kind of surreal to run into Fairmont friends in a town two hours away! The girls all got their picture taken with Miss Teen Great Plains International, Alaina Bertsch, who was the zoo's resident princess that day. If you find her Facebook page, we're in picture 180!

It was a great, quick excursion and we enjoyed our time there. And if you ask my kids what the best part of all this planning, activity and adventure was, you know what they'll tell you? Nope, it wasn't the pizza. It was the pool. Sigh.