Day 6, part 2--Wyoming--Devil's Tower National Monument

That's it. Off in the distance is Devil's Tower National Monument. Mount Rushmore was a long day but we rushed to see if we could quickly see this site. Glad we did because it was perfect and still left us only 1 day behind.

On the way there, we saw a small herd of these straggly looking goats. There were 6 or 7 of them on the side of the road so we stopped to get a picture.

We made it to the Visitor's Center at 6:15 and it closed at 7. So we rushed in to see how fast we could get our Junior Ranger stuff done. The park ranger was very nice and went ahead and filled out certificates and gave me the badges to give the kids when they finished. PERFECT!!! We were able to relax and just enjoy the site while the kids worked on their stuff (which was a nature booklet. If they saw a squirrel, check it off. If they saw ... Pretty easy stuff.) These telescopes were free to see close ups of the large rock formation.

And there it is. And Alex is sporting her Mount Rushmore badge. That was the only badge she earned on the trip so she was extra proud of it.

We followed a trail around the base of Devil's Tower and the kids enjoyed climbing some of the side boulders. You'll see Izzy's beginnings of a black eye (at the end of this post) from not being so careful on these rocks.=(

You can kind of see random ribbons tied to some branches in the trees all around the tower. These are hung up by indians who still worship at this site. They are prayer ribbons to keep the evil spirits away or something like that. Very fascinating stuff. I didn't know there were still rituals like that still performed for real instead of just show. Very cool indeed.

And there it is. The humble beginnings of the famous black eye to be. At first glance it looked fine, but very quickly swelled to be a golf-ball sized lump on her cheek. (Also notice her fancy badges.=)

It doesn't look bad ... yet. Wait til tomorrow.

Almost done with our trail, Glen spotted 2 deer grazing in the grass close to us. They just watched us and slowly went their own way. It was a fun close-up.

And I finally got to show Glen a mountain bluebird. I'd seen a few so far on the trip and had never seen something so bright blue before. Absolutely gorgeous.

Day 6, South Dakota--Mount Rushmore National Memorial

This was the park that inspired our whole trip. No matter what, we wanted to get to see Mount Rushmore and Mount Rushmore we did.

There's been a lot of stuff added to this site (not the rock monument itself) but a lot of this stuff wasn't here 15 years ago when Glen saw it with his family.

They had a booth for the kids to learn about flags. I didn't know that the different colors on our flag meant different things. Still can't tell you what they mean without looking it up but it was interesting to find out it wasn't just because the colors look good together.=)

Even Calvin found stuff to keep him busy.

Inside the Visitor's Center was TONS of information. Our favorite was learning that 90% of Mount Rushmore was formed by dynamite. They had this hands on exhibit. The kids would pick which part of Mount Rushmore they wanted to blast on the Tv screen. Then they'd push the dynamite blaster down and BOOM! The kids spent a lot of time blowing stuff up.=)

The hike around the base of the mountain had lots of lookup points. This view is from the inside of a cave. I thought it was fun cuz you can see right up Washington's nose.

They also had exhibits along the trail. We pet a buffalo fur.

We saw how the inside of a teepee might be decorated. We even noticed they had buffalo furs for carpeting.

And of course a teepee was set up so we could go inside.

This was some rubble at the base of the mountain. You can see some of the rocks have straight lines through them. These are from drilling in order to place dynamite.

On the trail was Borglum's art studio. This was where the mastermind behind the mountain did his work. This replica was used as a model for the workers. The park ranger is demonstrating a jackhammer.

Here's what the completed mountain would've looked like if the sculptor hadn't died or ran out of money for the project.

The kids worked on their Junior Ranger books throughout our visit. Lots of fun stuff we learned through these books. Even Alex had a Junior Ranger Trainee booklet she worked on. She enjoyed sporting her badge around after this trip.

Day 5, part 2--Wall, South Dakota--Wall Drug Store

What? You've never heard of Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota? Well, neither had I. It's this small town right outside of the Badlands and Glen said we HAD to stop. He'd been there as a kid and said it's this huge convenience store. We'd had a long day at the Badlands and personally I was done for the day. I wasn't ready for a random convenience store stop. But it was time for dinner so maybe they had some food in town. It turned out this place was huge and definitely worth the stop. We got dinner, walked around parts of the store (it even has it's own chapel inside--that's how big it is.) We got some homemade ice cream on our way out and headed for a hotel. The coolest part about this place was the story of how it came to be.

Quick synopsis: This poor family was living in the back of thier pharmacy/soda shop which wasn't making any money in such a small town. One day the wife said, "Do you know what all those cars on the highway want after driving through the hot prairie? They want nice cold ice water." So they made Free Ice Water signs and placed them along the highway. That day was the busiest day they'd had since they'd opened almost 5 years earlier. They went from not making hardly anything to now having I think 20,000 customers a day. Cool story huh. So this random convenience store has people loving the story so much that they post signs all over the world point to Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. Here's a sign at the South Pole. Notice "Free ice water" at the top of the sign.

This is what some of the signs on the side of the highway look like.

They have a new backyard playplace which was perfect. Our favorite was this jackalope.

Tons of other random stuff. If you find the T-Rex, hang around for 15 mins. and see the surprise. Just keep your kids a little ways away. Alex and Calvin were scared.=)

So if you're ever in South Dakota, you gotta stop at Wall Drug.

Day 5--South Dakota--Badlands National Park

Welcome to the Badlands. I'd never heard of it before this trip but whenever I heard the name, I always felt I was headed into my own World of Warcraft town.=) We got there to find what I compare to a miniature Grand Canyon. Of course we still had to be careful, but it was more touchable than the Grand Canyon. There were places to climb and play. We listened to a talk about fossils and enjoyed a few fun trails. We saw wildlife including the prairie dogs we watched from the side of the road for a while. We were supposed to enjoy the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore on the same day, but we had way too much fun exploring and being out of the car, so our plans were delayed a day. But that was the fun of this trip. We could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. Enjoy the many pictures.

Izzy and Alex had fun sliding down this section.

We watched the prairie dogs from the side of the road for a while. We found they make a loud squeaking noise.

Can anyone explain this to me?

In South Dakota in the town right before the Badlands, why was Super Unleaded cheaper than Regular Unleaded? Hmmm.

Day 3 and 4--Random stops through Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota

Day 3 and 4 goals were to get as far through the 11 hours through Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota as quickly as possible. (I think Oklahoma was in there somewhere too.) We almost stopped at Dorothy's house when we first got into Kansas but we were in the "Let's go quickly" mode. Maybe some other time we'll be driving backroads through these few random states. I have to admit, it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The green is absolutely beautiful and the small hills kept us going. South Dakota ... well, we're thinking maybe we'll add Ellsworth AFB to our wish list because those black hills are gorgeous. Here's a few pictures of a random rest stop we enjoyed.

We stopped at this gas station because I actually heard the Emergency Broadcast System come on the radio to warn us of severe weather. These clouds were a little on the scary side so we ate dinner to pass some time. We finished dinner just in time to enjoy the rain driving 25 mph on the freeway. Now that was an experience. Everyone was driving with their hazard lights on.

But after the rain, we looked back to find a PERFECT double rainbow. These pictures don't even share half of its brilliance and there was no way to fit the whole picture in our camera. It was BEAUTIFUL and got even more brilliant as we sat there and watched for a few mins. Andrew wanted to run to the end to see if he could find gold.=)

Thank you South Dakota. We enjoyed the trip.

Day 2, part 2--Amarillo, Texas--Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument

A little further down the road is the Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument. They only take 2 tours to the actual quarries twice a day during the summer (only once a day during the other times) and the tour is 2 hours long and since we had a slow morning, we skipped the tour. But the kids could still earn their badges by watching the video and filling out their booklet so we explored the visitors center. We found some fun things that had nothing to do with the quarries.

We saw 2 of these huge grasshoppers. They were about the same size as Izzy's hand. She tried to catch them, but they were far and fast jumpers. Plus I wasn't sure if they'd bite.

Texas has so many cool bugs. Fun black haired spider.

This looked like such a cool bug and stayed in the same spot for most of our stay, but then I found out it was a wasp. I guess it's still pretty.

Check out that fun long lizard. We're going to miss Texas' cool creatures.

The quarries are on the other side somewhere out there. We watched a video and there were flint samples inside the visitors center with lots of colors. My favorite part was watching the video and seeing the ranger make an arrowhead. They make it look so easy. But I guess that's what the warriors of the past did.