Congratulations to our Staycation Package Winners!

1ST PLACE: Samantha West

• (4) 1-day passes to Wild Water West
• 8 tickets to Thunder Road
• $40 gift certificate to Famous Dave's

My family and I like to go camping.  We have lots of vacation pictures.  The picture here is my cousin Sam and me with our sling shots.  We are sitting in our camping chairs shooting acorns over an open gully at Newton Hills.  There are lots of oak trees at Newton Hills and in the fall when the wind blows the acorns fall from the trees.

One time my cousin Sam & I were suppose to be taking a nap in the cabin at Newton Hills State Park.  My Dad was napping too.  We heard a big pounding noise on the side of the cabin and thought someone was knocking on the door.  We woke up my Dad and he told us it was probably acorns dropping on the roof.  Then it sounded again and this time my Dad got up to answer the cabin door - but no one was there.  It kept happening and none of us got any sleep.  Later we figured out it was a woodpecker pecking at the pine log cabin!

2ND PLACE: Ruth Sauers

• (2) 1-day passes to Wild Water West
• $20 gift certificate to Texas Roadhouse

We were planning an overnight trip to Lewis & Clark Lake last summer but at the last minute decided to cancel the trip to save a little money.  Instead we planned to have a couple of "staycation" days in Sioux Falls.  However, on the first night of our staycation, our 4 year old son Luke was playing on the monkey bars at Sertoma Park, slipped off and landed on his elbow.  We took him to Acute Care and after taking x-rays, they determined nothing was broken, just sore and swollen.  Needless to say, our staycation plans changed and we definitely did not save any money!

3RD PLACE: Rita Branson

• 2 day passes to Wild Water West

The funniest part of our vaction was trying to keeping up with the person in the front leading 5 cars to get where we are going.

Thank you for the numerous entries in our great Staycation contest! Congratulations to the following three consolidation winners.

Julie Claveau:

My family decided to purchase a tent large enough for us all to camp out-Myself, husband, my parents and grandparents all chose to stay in this new tent. We camped at Itasca State Park-everybody was having a great time-the weather was perfect, we had a great meal and then it was time for everybody to get into their sleeping bags and go to sleep. We all woke up around 3:30 AM to thunder and lightning and then this huge downpour-it was raining sheets of water, unfortunately we discovered that our new tent leaked, there was water coming in from all sides and water was even coming in from the ground outside of the tent. It didn't take long before we were wading in the water and knew that we all would have to evacuate ship or run the risk of drowning in our own home away from home!  Needless to say we all spent the night in our cars and spent the majority of that morning drying out the tent and everything else in it. At the time it wasn't so funny but when we got back home and started reminiscing we all had a good laugh, especially my wonderful grandparents (who were both in their 80's) They were the best good sports of all of us!  That evening gave us alot of good memories!

Becki Claus:

3 years ago we went to the hills for Christmas vacation and we decided to go horseback riding well first of all it was winter, not that you can't ride in the winter, but if you are inexperienced its better to do in non icy conditions.Our guide took us to the Black Hills state forest which mind you is up hill so we are on these horses that haven't been rode since at least September it is now December well needless to say they,the horses, are quite antsy so we bound up this hill which i almost fell off then we go meandering through the woods well its going pretty well until the ride was coming to an end and yep you guessed it we have to go back down i get to the edge and my horse won't go then he does and he starts slipping and i am screaming at the guide i'm gonna die the horse is slipping and he says no just trust your horse i say but i don't even know him how can i trust him, then after we are down and headed back my horse goes into an all out canter because i'm sure he wants to just get back to the barn,we get back and i dismount and the horse breathes a sigh of relief, literally.

Renee Branson: