From Muddy Puddles to Streams of Living Water: 1880 Steam Train

Monday, July 16, 2012

1880 Steam Train

It seamed that we were destined to ride the 1880 steam train in the Black Hills a few weekends ago while on our first family camping trip in two years. If you missed the first part of our eventful camping trip you can read about it here. We were about to head back into the mountains for the train ride when our van wouldn't start, which changed our plans for the afternoon dramatically. After we decided to begin the process of purchasing a new van we decided to call the train depot and see if any train rides were still available for early Sunday morning. Our kids were so bummed that we missed the train ride on Saturday so we figured we'd be able to fit in an early train ride Sunday morning before we headed home. Sunday morning we set our alarms to get us up early, we got everyone loaded in the van and we headed to the train station only to find out that we had been given mis-information and that there was no early train ride available on Sunday mornings. And for a second time we had to break the bad news to the kids that there would be no train ride. Oh yeah, you can imagine the disappointment. That's when we made the decision to go back to our camp site, pack up and then head back to the train station for their 10 am ride and not worry about getting home late. We were all glad that it worked out to ride the 188o steam train in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was a beautiful ride and the kids had a blast and it extended our trip that otherwise would have felt like it had been cut in half due to the car issues earlier in the trip. We made it home late but no one was the worse for it and all in all it turned out to be a great family camping trip!