delightful surprise

The Bismarck North Dakota Temple is our temple.  It's roughly a 5 ½ hour drive each way no matter which dinky little country highway you chose to take, and there are dozens of them.  We make the trek a couple of times a year and randomly try different roads each time.  This weekend we were caravanning with some friends on the way home.  With 8 adorable kids between us, . .

it's no surprise that someone needed to use the bathroom a few hours into the drive.  Luckily we  were passing through Lemmon, SD. And people, are you ready for this?  It turns out that Lemmon, SD is home of,

The World’s Largest Petrified Wood Park and Museum! 

You know we are suckers for wacky, tacky free tourist attractions so we, okay, I insisted that we drive the 4 blocks out of our way to check it out; who knows when we’ll be in Lemmon, SD ever again.

Well worth it! As wacky and tacky as they come!  In the same league as Car Henge and the Enchanted Highway.

The museum was closed, but the park was awesome! It had lots of concrete cones, columns, benches, and arches covered in hunks of petrified wood and these bizarre rock spheres. The kids ran around like crazy until the adults got too cold. 

Such a little gem. There were lots of electrical outlets around; I’m half tempted to drive the 3 ½ hours in December to see if they light the place up for Christmas, only that would be like 7 hours round trip…so maybe not.