Day 5 Vacation-Black Hills Adventures

After Mt. Rushmore, we did a few other tourist activities in the Black Hills. We visited a weird place called Cosmos where they used some kind of optical illusions to make you senses feel off. It was our least favorite activity of the whole trip. Since the sense of gravity was all off, Nathan took a big fall in the cabin and cut up his leg. Of course, I had no band-aids in my purse and the tears were flowing. Why did I not think to put in bandaids ? Probably because I had so much other stuff in there. 

The gift shop included some colorful rocks which are Elizabeth's favorite thing ever. 

It also included this hat which is Nathan's favorite thing ever. Neither kid got anything from the souvenir shop this time. Sorry guys. 

Here was inside the cabin. I had a hard time taking pictures because I could barely stand up and felt dizzy and kind of nauseous. The only person who walked out of this place ok was Jeremy of course. Elizabeth and I recovered pretty quickly, but Nathan was pretty upset about his cut. 

The kids could lean really far forward and not actually fall. It was weird.  The best part about this place was that we paid extra money so that they could hunt for a geode and then crack it open! More rocks! 

After the weird house, we drove up to Reptile Gardens in Rapid City. We spent hours there and the kids had a great time. They had all kinds of animals there. Not just reptiles. 

My favorite part of the visit was the alligator show. It was really cool. There were like 20-25 alligators hanging out in this pool and the tour guide was in there trying to feed them and give us information on alligators. It was fun to watch how fast they moved when the saw the food. Otherwise, they were as still as the dead.  The kids loved when the alligators would snap at him. 

They had the cutest little area with prairie dogs! They were very well fed prairie dogs. 

Here are the huge tortoises. 

Nathan hanging out with the 111 year old tortoise. 

They had a whole indoor area with all kinds of neat birds. 

This alligator was named Maniac and he was HUMONGOUS. 

The kids and Jeremy also spent a bunch of time looking at the snakes. They had a lot of those too. Sorry, no pictures of those as I sat and rested. 

We went back to my cousin's house and had dinner. My cousin was so nice and thoughtful to make sure that what we had was all safe for Nathan. It takes so much effort to feed the kids safely and she really went out of her way to make sure they were included. Of course, the kids fed the deer. Then,  the kids wanted to head out riding again. They just loved that. 

Down the road they go! 

The state had done some logging and messed up some of the roads. They thought the side by side could maybe make it up and over this weird dirt hill. Nope. Got stuck and had to get pulled out. 

Elizabeth was such a crazy driver!! She kept trying to run into trees and was swerving all over the road. 

Complaining About Smoke

Well, August rolled in with smoke. Exactly on August 1, British Columbia decided to start sending us all their lovely forest fire smoke. I thought Canada was supposed to be friendly? 

Now that we're home from vacation, the kids are busy with tennis and swimming lessons. Luckily, tennis is inside. Here is a picture I snapped at swimming lessons on July 31st. All was well and the sky was the usual beautiful blue. 

Oh, there is also a doodle at swimming lessons now. The swim teacher got a puppy last year. He is not allowed outside for swimming lessons. He is forced to watch through the glass sliding door. Apparently, every time the door has been accidentally opened, he's sprinted by and jumped straight in the pool during swim lessons. 

Here is a picture at swimming lessons on August 2nd. The kids are practicing their backstroke in an extremely disgusting gray air. I told them they didn't even need sunscreen that day because they already had smokescreen. The smoke had really filtered out the sun. 

The city pools actually closed down their swimming lessons for that afternoon and evening because they didn't want the kids outside breathing this air. 

Here's the sunset picture Jeremy got a few nights ago while at work. 

It's now August 5th, and we've had 5 straight days of this. I guess we deserved it. Last year, we didn't get even one smoky day. Usually, if we get forest fire smoke, it's always in August. I've just never seen it this bad ever. I'm not letting the kids outside since they have such a bad tendency to allergies and it seems Nathan is now possibly having asthma issues. 

And they say it's going to last at least another week as for whatever reason, we are getting NO wind and the little wind we are getting is apparently from the north. We are so well known for our constant SW winds that blow pretty consistently most of the year. But of course when there is a big fire, the air doesn't budge. 

Ok, enough complaining about the weather. Hopefully, the wind will finally start to move in about a week. 

To apologize for the smoke whining, here is a picture of a doodle. 

Day 5 Vacation-Mt. Rushmore

We went to see Mt. Rushmore! It's always neat to see. 

Apparently we were the family with sunhats on this trip. But hey, no one got sunburned! 

Nathan found a book in the gift store he thought was fantastic! 

The kids had fun in the interpretive center. Here, if you pushed the lever, you would see a dynamite explosion on Mt. Rushmore from when they were sculpting it. They would have done this all day long. 

We did the hike under Mt. Rushmore so we could see it a little more closely. I did a few more pictures there. 

Day 4 Vacation-Wyoming and South Dakota

The next day, we drove from Powell, Wyoming to my cousin's house in South Dakota. 

Something that was fun about the trip was to see how things are different in every state. We haven't really left our state very much since the kids were born (except Oregon and Idaho) so we're not used to awesome things like getting to drive 80 mph!!! Washington's speed limit is 70 max. Probably we just have too many people on the roads and don't have as many long straight stretches.  We kept calculating how much time we were saving going 80 rather than the 70 at home. 

There was one place, however, we did NOT go 80. We drove across the Bighorn Mountain Pass. Wow, that was quite the climb up and then quite the drive down. So, so steep and so many switchbacks. It was CRAZY. Beautiful, but a bit terrifying. 

I knew it was going to be like that so I was nice and let Jeremy drive it. He always needs to keep his driving skills in tip-top shape so I'm sure he appreciated this driving adventure. 

When we got almost to the top, the kids had to use the bathroom. By some stroke of luck, there was a rest area there. Here's a picture I took. There was some smoke in the distance so you can't really see how high up we were, but it was high. 

There was such a cute little rest room up there. And it was SO QUIET. I am a big fan of quiet, so I just wanted to stay there. I think we met under 5 cars our whole trip up the pass. For some reason, people don't seem to want to drive that way. Huh. 

Here was the view driving across the top of the pass. So beautiful and green and just cows out there grazing. 

When we got to the bottom, I took over the driving and drove us over to South Dakota. I really liked driving in Wyoming. 80 mph and the drivers were so relaxed there. 

Welcome to South Dakota! I had been to South Dakota once when I was a kid to see Mt. Rushmore. This was like 25 years ago I think. My cousin Norma lives in the Black Hills area so we stopped for a visit. I hadn't seen her in 20 years!! That seemed unbelievable to me. She seemed just the same to me though. It was like no time had passed. 

She had kites there for the kids. The wind was just right that day and the kids were really able to get some good kite flying in!! It was really neat. At home, our kites are usually kind of duds even though it's always windy. Apparently, South Dakota is awesome for kite flying. 

The other neat thing about South Dakota is that you are allowed to feed deer from your porch!  The kids had a lot of fun. Both nights we were there, they rushed out after dinner to feed the deer. 

This is the kids playing with the dry ice from our cooler. That stuff is neat. We tried an experiment on this trip to see if it would keep stuff frozen. It definitely worked.  However, we were spending $10 every few days on dry ice to keep a $3 pack of frozen burritos frozen.... 

So Jeremy and the kids did fun experiments and Norma and Donald and I watched the science that was occurring. I think in this picture, they had added dish soap to see what happened. 

Donald and Norma took us to look at an open pit gold mine! It was really huge. The kids liked watching the dump trucks drive up and down. The trucks looked really tiny, but we know they were huge! 

That evening, the kids got to go riding on the quads. They had a fabulous time out riding! 

Nathan got to learn to drive!! 

They had a pond the kids checked out. 

We rode around until it got pretty dark. It was really a fun time. 

August Calendar

It's August grandparents!  I know you're been waiting all year to see Jeremy on your Christmas gift. The kids and I have been waiting all year to see Jeremy up on our calendar too. The local animal shelter wanted to fund raise with a calendar this year. They persuaded the police department to take pictures with some of the dogs to sell more calendars. I guess it was a big hit! 

A few things about Jeremy's picture. He is holding a Coke. That's weird. I've never seen him hold a coke in his life. He's a Pepsi and Mountain Dew guy. Also, he said the dogs were on leashes and they photoshopped those out. 

Day 3 Vacation-North Yellowstone Loop

After we visited the wolves and bear (singular), we spent the day driving the "North Yellowstone" loop. It's a good thing we saw the wolves and bear at that place, because we saw no wolves or bears on our drive. We did, however, see lots of buffalo so that was neat for the kids. Here's a bunch of pictures of the usual stuff. Waterfalls, boiling mud, etc. 

A cool waterfall!

Boiling mud!

The colors of the mud here were neat. 

Mammoth Falls was really neat looking. I took a bunch of pictures here. 

More Mammoth Falls

The drive around North Yellowstone was very pretty. I took a lot of pictures here too. 

A family photo on top of a large cliff. 

A really neat spot where we saw a river gush over a waterfall. 

This picture was funny. The sign says human crossing, but does that look like a human? I don't think so. 

In the FAR distance, there is a herd of buffalo with calves here. 

Dragon cave because smoke puffed out like a dragon was in there. 

Lake Yellowstone was really pretty. 

We got stuck in some road construction for like 30 minutes. It was more than enough time to make 4 sandwiches and pull out some chips and fruit. Jeremy thought it was funny so he took a picture. 

The sign where we entered at West Yellowstone

The top of a very high spot

More Mammoth Falls

Jeremy with his binoculars. 

That was our day. We drove to Powell, Wyoming that night. There were no closer hotel rooms and I had booked that room like 2 months ago. 

The kids favorite part of Yellowstone was all the hats that had blown into the pools of mud or boiling liquid. They also really enjoyed the signs with the picture of the kid falling into the boiling mud. Jeremy's favorite part was the colorful pools. So was mine!