I had a chance last week to meet Mary and Don Nolin, two of the winners in the “Vacation Makeover: Destination Mount Rushmore,” online contest. They won a free vacation to the Black Hills, worth up to $4,000, and a Kodak Zx1 Pocket Video Camera.

Mary and Don,  a very nice couple from Lincoln, Neb., are no strangers to the Black Hills. In fact, they were married at the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood in 1995, and they regularly return to Deadwood to play the slots and see the sights.

Their story about the Deadwood wedding, posted on the contest page, www.blackhills.travel, won more than 10,000 votes from online readers. That’s how they won the trip.

But this trip will be much different than their past Black Hills adventures. For one thing, if you’ve ever traveled to the Black Hills you know $4,000 goes a long, long way.

Intern Caitlin Roeder pieces together fragments of an ancient mammoth tusk in the lab at the Hot Springs Mammoth Site. The Nolins got a behind-the-scenes Mammoth Site tour.

Their schedule includes more than two dozen attractions, including Custer State Park, Wind Cave, Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Wall Drug, two gold mines, a couple of caves, a few museums and family attractions such as Reptile Gardens, the Cosmos and Bear Country USA.

On Thursday, they got a private, behind-the-scenes tour of the Hot Springs Mammoth site. (Fascinating, by the way, for us tag-alongs.)

“We’re going to need a vacation from our vacation,” Mary said with a chuckle.