During our vacation to the Black Hills & Badlands of South Dakota, we decided to enjoy some of the sights in Rapid City. 

The Black Hills/Badlands area is very expansive and Rapid City is the closest city to Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore. 

Our summer travels took us to a whole new area of the country for our family – the Black Hills of South Dakota!

After our wonderful trip to Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park last summer, we decided that we wanted another ‘back to nature’ vacation.

Don’t you just love family vacations?! The opportunity to get away and explore someplace new! The time away from the daily schedule and all the things that need to be done at home 🙂 The packing, unpacking and repacking (ha!)   We had some fun posts shared last week at the Discover & Explore Vacations …

I love today’s theme for the Discover & Explore linky!  Ok, I really love all of our themes but this one is really fun because we get to talk about Vacations!

I adore vacations — heading out to explore a new place, relax and reconnect with the family. 

I had two amazing parents who would take us on vacation every year and we’ve continued this tradition with our kids.  We make travel a priority so we save year round for our trips and take advantage of every minute we have on our trips.  Traveling is such a great experience!  It allows you to discover new things (foods, animals, etc) explore different cultures & areas and also learn more about yourself.

I can’t wait to see what everyone shares in the linky this week!  I’d love to see great places that your family has visited, fun vacation memories or wonderful tips & ideas that make the trip special.  I thought I would start off by sharing a few places that we’ve enjoyed on past trips.

One of the most popular attractions for families is the zoo.  I’m not sure if it’s all the curiosity that we have about animal behavior or the fact that most of our kids act like animals so we think they’ll feel at home during their visit 😉

And June is National Zoo Month!  Our last Discover & Explore linky theme was Zoos & Wild Animals and we had some great reviews of family friendly zoos that were shared.

We are officially on summer vacation (yea!) and making some fun plans for what we’d like to do this year.  Once of the top things on our list each summer is to explore someplace new in our city.  I’m sure you know, just like me, that life gets busy once you have kids.  And all …

Welcome back! 

Today is Day 2 in our week-long series:  The ABC’s of Family Field Trips!

During the first day, we shared tips for getting ready, ways to use books, exploring on your visit and 24 ideas of places to take the kids. 

Today we’ll focus on topics and outings for F – J.

Today we’re covering more tips & tricks for planning enjoyable Family Outings on our 5-part series:

The ABC’s of Family Field Trips

Here’s a summary of the first 3 days:

{Part 1} Getting Ready, Exploring & Fun Field Trips

{Part 2} Having Fun, Inspiration & Hands-on Ideas

{Part 3} Learning, New Places & Outdoor Fun

Today’s focus will be on Pretend Play, Reading, Science & Tours.

Welcome to Part 3 of our Family Field Trip series!

So far, we’ve shared a number of ideas & tips along with more than 35 fun places to visit for a family outing!

Here are the first two posts in the series:

{Part 1} Getting Ready, Exploring & Fun Field Trips

{Part 2} Having Fun, Inspiration & Hands-on Ideas

And we’ve still got lots more to cover!  This post will highlight the letters K – 0 as we discuss learning, new places & outdoor fun.

My family will tell you that I love to plan for visiting new places (they’ll actually say I spend more time planning than I do visiting ;).  What can I say, I like to be prepared.  So, I thought I would put together a guide for those of you getting ready to visit SEA LIFE Aquarium in Kansas City.

Take a look at some of these FAQs (frequently asked questions) and tips before your visit!