Family Holiday.

Friday

The three of us set off today for a three day road trip. We headed North East first, towards Rapid City, South Dakota.

We saw some of the Oregon Trail, and stood in the wagon ruts that are still visible.

 

We went to the Flintstones Village, but the admission was too high for kids of our age group, so we had a picnic lunch there and moved on (it was only 2 minutes out of our way)

We saw the Crazy Horse Monument, and I got a geocache in the parking lot (yay, first SD geocache).

Then there was Mount Rushmore. This was a favourite for Briony. We took a guided tour, and went to the museum. There were a lot of stairs, and it was hot hot hot. So much for summer lasting a week out here, it was over 80 every day of vacation and has been for nearly a month now.

On the way to the hotel from there we stopped at Bear Country, a drive through wild animal sanctuary. The Arctic Wolves were amazing and beautiful creatures. We looped around their section three times, I just couldn't get enough of them. There were various other animals, and tons of bears. We even followed two that were fighting. I will get the video uploaded soon. They came within a few feet of the car, it was pretty wild to see.

After dinner we made it a pretty early night, as I'd been driving for about seven hours at that point and was exhausted.

Saturday

Today we went to the Air and Space Museum at the Air Force Base. There were a lot of cool decommissioned planes outside, and an interesting museum inside. Of special interest (to all of us) was an old flight simulator. We all took a turn, and I filmed Cale, which I will upload soon. It was awesome.

 

We went downtown to see life sized bronze statues of Briony's favourite presidents, and it turns out we were there just in time for their parade. We had great seats and Cale got lots of candy, which for him is the indication of a good parade.

We made a stop at Dinosaur Land, home of some life sized dinosaurs. More steps!

We stumbled on another museum, which lead us to the Geologic Center of the United States. This was pretty cool, although it was a long boring drive to the middle of nowhere. I had thought we already were there, turns out we weren't. The geologic center is determined by balancing a cardboard cutout of the US and wherever it balances, that is the center. It has moved three times now. First it was in Kansas, but when they added Alaska, it was moved to SD, and then when Hawaii was added, it moved a little further North to where we were in SD.

 

From there we entered back into Wyoming and on to Devils Tower. The view was amazing from miles away, and we took lots of photos at different distances and angles.

We spent the night at a cabin just feet from the entrance to Devils Tower, and the kids made smores from a fire with the Tower right next to us. We also went on a BUMPY hour long hay ride over through fields next to the Tower that the owner of the KOA also owned (20,000 acres) and got to see many different, beautiful views of the Tower as the sun set.

Sunday

We woke up early to a thunder and lightening storm behind the Tower. What a view to wake up to! From our front porch we could see it all, and it was glorious. We took our time getting ready to go, as the Tower and home were all that was on our schedule today.

We went to the visitor's center and headed on our hike around the tower. There were a couple of virtual geocaches that I wanted to get, so we took breaks often to re-access our location and information I needed to gather from the informational signs. We saw several climbers on the Tower, and it's hard to believe that they were going to make it by night fall (this was about 10am). There is an old wooden ladder that was visible from one side, that the first climbers used to get to the top. It is hard to imagine someone attempting this without modern safety equipment. It was just amazing to stop and sit and look at it, which might sound weird if you haven't been there, as it is just a large rock, but in actuality, it is so much more.

Climbers on the Tower - not zoomed

Climbers on the Tower - zoomed

After the storms passed we entered the park, and the first thing (and last thing on the way out) was a big field of prairie dog dens. They weren't very active on the way in, but on the way out there were hundreds you could see. I have a video of that too.
 

 

We made as direct a trip home as was possible (another five hours for me!) and got a quick dinner before dropping Cale off at home.