Washington To Washington Day 4-5

 Camping hair, don't care!

On our way to Mount Rushmore, I spied the Museum of the Rockies, and I had to stop. We love dinosaurs! You just can't dangle a T-rex skeleton and not expect me to stop, come on!

Any time Teddy spies a pole he has to spin around it.

    They had a Divinci exhibit and the kids liked this mirror closet. They loved all the inventions, Devon happened to touch one that he shouldn't have and it collapsed, but other than that we had a great time. I was nursing Teddy in a dark corner where there were a few chairs when a lady came up to me and complimented me and said it was so nice to see someone nursing. She missed those days when her daughter was young. That was a first for me, she was very sweet and earnest. Then we drove to our next stop: High Plains RV Resort and Campground.

     We were the only tent campers, and a thunderstorm rolled in. The kids were worried that we might be struck, but I assured them that we were safe. The rain was so intense for a bit that the tent dipped nearly into the boy's faces (They were on the taller mattress.) We survived it well though. Look at the glorious morning:

Our next stop was The Devil's Tower!

    They were out of the junior ranger books, but they gave the kids a badge anyway. It was fun, I had never driven up to it before. We didn't spend a lot of time here since our real destination was Mt. Rushmore. I was hoping to meet up with my FoE friend there, but we didn't connect in time. Her family went for a hike and didn't have reception. "Missed her by that much!" She had suggested going to the Devil's Tower and I figured why not.

The view from my side:

The view from Lizzy's side:

On to Mount Rushmore! Upon entering I asked who needed the facilities and left the other kids in Lizzy's charge. When I returned Teddy was bleeding all over his arms. He had taken a rather nasty fall on some rocks and a kind person gave Lizzy a hand with cleaning him up. The adventures never cease.

    I didn't remember it being so covered in gift shops, there were at least 4, plus a food truck on the Avenue of Flags! There was an ice cream store that really tempted the kids, but at $6 for a small I declined. We did get soem ice cream at DQ in town though, (I'm not a heartless monster after all.) We were here for a lot longer than I anticipated, it was closing when we left. Lizzy on the onset had delcared Mt. Rushmore a useless stop and couldn't understand why I was including it on our trip, but once there she agreed it was worth the stop. I know she had been there before, but that was nearly a decade ago. Teddy really liked the TNT plunger controler in the exhibit. It would set off the real explosions on a screen. As you can imagine, it was difficult to pull him away. 

     I had planned to drive to Nebraska to camp, but since we had stayed an extra day our reservation had passed, so I decided to just go as far as I could get. I figured there would be a rest stop or something along the way. Little did I know, the gps had other ideas. Instead it tooks us through all these small towns on a forgotten highway. Everything was closed and so we kept going. We finally got to a main highway around midnight. I spied a rest stop at1am. We stopped until 4 am and then continued to Olathe Kansas. 11 hours of driving. I was spent!

Washington to Washington Day 3

  Yellowstone is a magical place. We went to the visitor center at the west entrance to get a map and figure out our plan of attack. We didn't have time to do the whole loop. I was worried a bit because the upper loop was reported to have the most animals, and we really wanted to see the bison. Luckily we were met by them twice!

As the granddaughter of a park ranger, I had to snap a selfie here!

Such wide expanses! There were a ton of people there so parking at the hot spots was a little tricky, but we saw ample geysers.

Fluffy Cows!

They got pretty close.

The coloring of the geysers was extraordinary.

It was very spa-like with all the steam, the smell was less desirable.

Look at those colors!

Waiting for Old Faithful. We ended up checking out the visitor center while we waited. 

It's happening!!!

  After witnessing the geyser, we ran to the gym and had sacrament meeting. We had planned to change before, but Old Faithful took a lot longer than we expected, so we went as we were, as were most of the other members, so we were in good company. They had Charles pass the sacrament and I led the music. The high counselor spoke about service and mentioned us in his talk, that was fun. They have a missionary couple that runs the branch there, they were so sweet.

We headed back to our campsite, but I took a wrong turn and had to turn around. We finally made it back and had a good night.