South Dakota Surprises

After finishing a South Dakota vacation with my children, 9, 7 and 4 years old, I want to note some attractions unmentioned in your recent column (“Around South Dakota, History Is Writ Large and Set in Stone,” Taking the Kids, July 15).

In Hill City, S.D., just behind Mt. Rushmore, there are daily Conestoga covered wagon rides that take you off the road and back into the hills. We saw two deer and mountain lion tracks. Also in Hill City, there’s the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, which houses bones from a Tyrannosaurus rex .

The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, S.D., was mentioned, but not Evans Plunge in the same town: a natural hot spring that is a wonderful place for kids to have fun, with water slides and tubes.

In most of the small towns in the Black Hills, all within an hour of one another, there is usually a free Old West show in the evening on the main streets.

SUE LARSON PASCOE

Pacific Palisades