June vacation part 4

6/21/09:

We took our bikes and went on one bike ride while in So. Dakota. It was so windy and hilly that we weren't gone very long!


Three of the four of us have summer birthdays so we decided to celebrate while we were all together. Mom made this lovely cake in the camper with no official oven! I think her machine that acted like an oven did a fantastic job!

Sunday evening we went back to the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial to see the lighting of the mountain. They played a movie that explained more about why those four presidents were chosen and then turned the lights on. It was a neat experience!




At the end of the night they had all of the veterans that were in the audience go down to the stage. They had each one of them say their name and what branch of the military they served in. It was pretty cool to see all of those veterans who have served our country!

6/22/09:

Dave & I were on a mission to see as much wildlife as we could while in So. Dakota. Cathy suggested that we drive the "Wildlife Loop." We had driven for quite a while and still hadn't seen any wildlife besides the ever popular pronghorns when we arrived on this scene. There were several cars parked along side the road with a small herd of donkeys nearby. People had gotten out of their cars and were feeding these donkeys. Dave rolled down his window to get a better shot when this guy started booking it over to the car. He must have thought Dave was going to feed him. Too funny! The donkey got snot all over Cathy's car. Good times!

This is by far my favorite picture of the entire trip! After Dave's friend decided Dave wasn't going to feed him he found this vehicle with its window open and thought he would help himself!

A little bit farther down the loop we came on this scene...buffalo everywhere!




Because of Dave's brother's (Zach) influence, Dave was very interested in all of the different types of rocks in So. Dakota. Cathy thought Dave might enjoy a museum in Rapid City at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. It was a FREE museum and had tons of amazing things from fossils, to rocks, to dinosaur bones! We all had a great time learning more about the history of So. Dakota.


Petrified wood

Triceratops femur (it's hard to tell from the picture, but that bone was huge!)

Me admiring all of the pretty rocks

Dinosaur poop

June vacation part 3

Because of the "situation" we are in as a country, one weekend a month during the summer months you can visit any national park for free. They've decided to wave their entrance fees for specific weekends in order to attract more visitors. We happened to be in So. Dakota during one of these free weekends so we decided to make the sort of long trek from our campground to the Badlands on Saturday. On the way there we stopped in Wall, So. Dakota to visit the famous Wall Drug. What an experience!

6/20/09:

Trying on cowboy hats at Wall Drug

Down at the end of the hall is a T-Rex display. Every few minutes he wakes up and roars. It seemed to be a little bit too scary for some of the younger kids!

Back in 1931 Dorothy & Ted Hustead opened the only drugstore in Wall, So. Dakota (pop. 326). In the beginning business was really slow. "One hot Sunday in July [1936], though, a great change swept us up." Dorothy decided that her husband could handle the store alone since they had no customers and went home for a rest. About an hour later she came back with a brilliant idea. She was unable to sleep because all of the noise from traffic driving by on Route 16A. Most of them were traveling to Mt. Rushmore and/or the Badlands. She came up with the brilliant idea of putting signs up along the highway telling people to go there for free ice water. The next weekend Ted put up those signs and by the time he got back to the store people had already begun showing up for their ice water. Those signs worked and they have never been lonely for customers since. It has grown today into this huge tourist attraction with all sorts of things to do and see.

"Free Ice Water. It brought us Husteads a long way and it taught me my greastest lesson, and that's that there's absolutely no place on God's earth that's Godforsaken. No matter where you live, you can succeed, because wherever you are, you can reach out to other people with something that they need!"

The Badlands

My mom is deathly scared of heights. I love this picture! It appears as though she is standing on the edge, but she is actually very far away from the edge. She played along with me and I got this great photo! LOL!

We were actually out on a ledge. It was soooo windy! I was afraid we might get blown off! Too scary for me!

"The White River Badlands in southwest South Dakota are the best places in the world to study and understand the effects of erosion. It is there that geology and life of the past connect themselves with the present. For approximately 30 million years, layers of mud, sands and gravels were laid down. In those layers are fossils of many different prehistoric animals preserved for modern study. About one to four million years ago erosion began to outpace the deposits, leaving colorful spires resembling castles."

"This area was once a portion of a giant salt water sea. Upheaval and volcanic activity pushed the sea floor up. As the water drained away, it left behind broad, marshy plains. About 25 million years ago three-toed horses, sabre-toothed cats and other prehistoric animals roamed the area. When they died, many were buried by river sediments or just sank into the marshlands. Periodically white volcanic ash covered the soil, hot winds blew across the plateaus and the terrain continued evolving."

Bighorn Sheep
All of the animals were losing their winter coat so they looked pretty dingy. This guy has a collar on too.

It is amazing that this sort of scenery is not too far away from the green gorgeous pictures taken in previous posts around Mt. Rushmore! Our planet is pretty cool!



More flower pictures from Dave

June vacation part 2

6/19/09 continued:

Us girls at the Crazy Horse Memorial

The first blast on this mountain was in 1948. As you can tell from the pictures the memorial is not complete. The original sculptor (Korczak Ziolkowski) has passed away, but his family still spearheads the project. They accept no government funds to complete this project so it is moving slowly. The visitor center and other avenues are where the funding comes from. I'm not sure this will be complete in my lifetime! It will be amazing when it is done though!

Here is a small replica of what the finished project will look like. All four 60-foot high heads on Mt. Rushmore would fit inside just Crazy Horse's head! It is HUGE!!!

Sylvan Lake

Cathy highly recommended we visit Sylvan Lake while in the area and I'm glad we did! It is so peaceful and so beautiful there!

Dave doing what he does best, exploring!

Me, Cathy & some random dude trying to keep up with Dave

Panorama shot of Sylvan Lake

So cool!!!

When a lady from our church found out that we were going to Mt. Rushmore she only said one thing about our trip and that was that we should drive Needles Highway. I'm glad she recommended it...truly amazing! Essentially this tiny road winds between huge rock formations.

Part of the "needles"

Cathy's Lexus barely fit through this tiny opening!!!

There are signs all over that tell you to honk before entering tunnels. Dave had a fun time honking the horn while I videoed our journey through the sunroof!

June vacation

I'm finally doing a post! Can you believe it? June was a whirlwind of a month and so far July has been pretty crazy too! I'm probably going to do these updates in parts so stayed tuned because there is more to come.

For my mom's first official vacation in about ten years she decided that she wanted to visit Mt. Rushmore. She thought it would be fun to meet us there. She also requested that we bring the pop-up camper (which is technically her camper, but she is letting us borrow it) so we could camp while enjoying the different places to visit around Mt. Rushmore. We left Utah on June 17th and stayed in So. Dakota for about a week.

6/17/09:

To get to Mt. Rushmore we drove pretty much the entire length of Wyoming. I've never seen Wyoming so green!

We just happened to drive right by Martin's Cove where many of the LDS treks leave from to follow along the trail that the early pioneers took to head west.

6/18/09:

There are lots of little lakes in that corner of So. Dakota. Very pretty!

On our way to a museum to learn more about the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore (Gutzon Borglum) we could see the profile of George Washington. It had been raining so George looked like he was crying!

We were both amazed by how pretty it is there! This is a little divided highway we drove on through the mountains and pine trees.

At several of the lookouts along the small highways you could see Mt. Rushmore off in the distance.

Dave, the biologist, has to stop and take pictures of the beautiful flowers whenever we travel.

6/19/09:

On our way to the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial we saw a couple of mountain goats along the highway so we had to stop and take pictures!

The girls (my aunt Cathy, me & my mom) at the entrance to the memorial

Dave & I posing for a picture

Cathy & mom

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt & Abraham Lincoln

Panorama shot of the entire mountain

There is a trail that goes along the base of the mountain so you can get right under the carvings. Cathy, Dave & I took the trail all the way around. Here you can see the rubble left from carving the mountain.

Dave was texting his family while we were on our hike and Jake requested that we get an "up the nose" shot, so here you go Jake! Hope you enjoy it!

Posing by some gorgeous rock formations!

Along the trail was a little building that had a small replica of what the finished project was supposed to look like. Gutzon died before he finished. Here you can see what his vision was. I think they should hire someone else to finish it! LOL!

6/19/09 to be continued...