Heading to a Bad Land

My family is taking its first "real" driving vacation this coming week. Saturday morning we leave for eight days in South Dakota.

Near as I can tell, we have a 6 1/2 hour drive on Saturday morning to get to Sioux Falls, our home away from home for the first 4 days of this trek. Then we head west to Spearfish for the second half of the week, another 6 hour drive or so. From the western side of the state we'll do all those touristy things people do in South Dakota -- the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and perhaps a cave or two.

The kids are 8 and 6. I remember when I was that age my family would drive to Kentucky nearly every summer to visit my mom's family. We had a two-door car with an average size backseat. That drive was about 11 hours.

Most people would tell you that I have sweet, well-behaved kids. But, I can't imagine 11 hours in the van with my kids, assuming everyone is awake. And that's in a VAN, where everyone can spread out a little.

You remember the Saturday night live skit with the angry old man (Dana Carvey). "Back in my day ..." he would say. "Back in my day, we didn't have these high-fallutin minivans, with their portable VCRs, their fancy music, and these modern headphones. Our headphones were our ears, and we would all scream at each other every mile of the way. And we didn't watch movies, we watched my sister turn green and throw up in the backseat. And we didn't listen to music -- we listened to the wind howling in our ears. That was called 'air conditioning.' And we liked, we LOVED it!"

Well, if you have a favorite trick for passing time in the van on family vacations, or a site we MUST SEE while in the great state of South Dakota, leave your suggestions here. I'll give a report when we return.