From Storybooks to Cowboy Grub

After waking up and realizing that we were camped in an amazingly beautiful spot, we let the kids run free while we made breakfast, then made a special trip down to the lakeside while the men took down our tents.  At the shore we found the most marvelous flat rocks, a whole beach full of them, just perfect for skipping.  We skipped rocks (or in the case of the littlest kids - just threw handfuls to see the splash) for quite a while before heading back up to get a start on our day.  The first order of business was to relocate our camping site to someplace that wasn't claimed for the weekend.  We found the campground attendant and he pointed us in the right direction.  Then, to save time, we set up the tents again so that we didn't have to do it in the dark when we got back.  Once that was accomplished it was off to Storybook Island.

Storybook Island is a fantastic FREE park in Rapid City that is full of playground equipment based on fairy tales, poems, children's tales and even some Bible stories too.  It was so very, very hot and the kids look like they are melting in all the pictures, but we had such a fun time.  We played in Peter Pumpkin-eater's house, stood in front of fun house mirrors, slid down slides from the top of the Crooked House, sat on the Cat in the Hat's lap, steered Little Toot, stood on the prow of Noah's ark, sat in the belly of Jonah's whale, rode on unicorns and fire engines, and crossed the troll's bridge with the Three Billy Goats Gruff.  The kids could have stayed there all day.  The weirdest thing that happened was when Grant and I found a crab on the gangplank to Noah's Ark.  It was missing a claw and I thought is was a toy some kid had dropped, so I bent down to pick it up and take it to the nearest Lost and Found, when it MOVED!!  I screamed and started to laugh and Grant jumped a foot in the air.  I gently scraped it into the surrounding water with my foot and we watched it sink and then awkwardly swim away.  It was all very odd!

 After Storybook Island we headed for Reptile Gardens.  Sandra slapped together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while Keith drove and when we arrived we divvied up the lunch food, drinks and chips before diving in for more fun.  May I say here that Keith really knows what he is doing.  We all would have died of dehydration or gone broke buying water, but he brought along a huge cooler of water and we just filled up Camelbaks and had plenty to drink all the time.  He saved our bacon!  Anyhoo, we arrived at the Reptile Gardens just in time for the crocodile show and the host was out of his gourd!!  He was in this pen surrounded by crocs and gators and then he poked around in the water to find a fiesty one and actually hauled it out onto dry land and sat on it and proceeded to do all manner of insane things like sticking his hand in its mouth!!  Grace thought his life and death tricks were really funny and she laughed loudly at the poor guy.  Watch his reaction to her laughter...

As he ratcheted up the danger factor I got so nervous!  At one point I had to turn away...I just did not want to see this guy lose his hand or any fingers, especially when he announced he was going to tickle the roof of the croc's mouth so that we could see how fast it's jaws would snap shut.  He came through, however, completely unscathed! At the end he brought out a baby gharial with its mouth taped shut and let anybody who wanted to touch it.  All the kids were brave and petted the nasty little thing, even Joseph!

We wandered throughout the park after the show and saw birds, snakes, HUGE crocodiles (16 feet + in length which NO ONE would ever DARE try to wrestle), all manner of lizards and insects including nasty spiders, giant tortoises, a prarie dog colony (which I thought was an odd addition to a reptile park until Chad mentioned that they probably use them to feed the gators), and a komodo dragon that Merritt wanted to take home sooo bad!  Nevermind that it was 8 feet long and venomous, Komodo (as he named it) would make a most excellent pet. We were able to make it out of there without Komodo, but just barely.  :)  The kids really enjoyed Reptile Gardens and the adults did too actually.  Win win!!  One thing that we learned at Reptile Gardens is that giant tortoises are reliable weather predictors.  When we arrived at the enclosure, all the tortoises were standing with their heads in the corners of the wooden fence that surrounded their home, and they were banging their noggins slightly against the wood.  It was so weird and looked rather like they were all in time-out or something for being naughty.  We asked their keeper what was up and he explained that the tortoises always did that when the weather was changing.  He predicted rain by the evening based on their reaction.  Always trust a tortoise.

Grace makes friends with a little snake.

Merritt has a million and one questions for the snake lady, including "Can I hold that?"

Grace, Eli, Merritt, Joseph and a giant turtle skeleton.

The tortoise hides from the weather.

Our next stop was the Circle B Chuckwagon for a shoot-out with the Biscuit Bandit, dinner, and an evening of cowboy singing.  It was raining off and on when we arrived (see...the tortoises know!) but cleared long enough for the traditional shoot-out.  The good guy and the Biscuit Bandit were having their showdown and the cowboy had the bad guy on the run.  He then invited all the kids down, deputized them, and sent them off after the Bandit.  He was waiting around the corner for them, though, and shot his cap gun at them.  They all screamed and came running back around the corner with the Bandit in hot pursuit.  The cowboy finally defeated him, however, and made him swear not to steal anymore biscuits...until the next show that is.  We went inside for dinner then; Chad and Keith tried the buffalo dinner plate, Sandra and I had roast beef, and the kids had the kids meal which (depending on who was ordering) had chicken or a hot dog or some roast beef.  The dinner was excellent.  Joseph wasn't interested in sticking around for the singing so he and I roamed around a lot and when the rain let up again we walked outside.  We were eventually joined by all the kids and before we headed out we stopped by one of the animal pens and fed grass and straw to the miniature horses and donkeys that were inside.  The kids were thrilled whenever an animal would eat out of their hands.  We wanted to end the day with the evening service at Mount Rushmore, but the rain put an end to that plan.  We did a drive-by of the Crazy Horse Monument and headed back to our campground to call it a day.

We took a vacation!

 I grew up going on family vacations.  Every summer we would pack up the RV and head out somewhere for a fabulous adventure.  When most of my classmates hadn't gone more than 4 hours outside of our hometown I had been to Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon and Washington DC and Atlantic City and to the Alamo and into Canada, and to Niagara Falls and to New York City and climbed the Statue of Liberty and descended into Carlsbad Caverns and had watched fishmongers throw huge fish in the air at Pike's Place Market and stood in solemn silence at Gettysburg and looked at the Liberty Bell and swum in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans as well as the in the Gulf of Mexico.  Despite the fact that none of us were ever lost (for long) or harmed in any way, I have to confess that Chad and I were strangely reluctant to take our children on an extended trip.  It seemed very difficult and expensive and fraught with drama.  After our successful excursion to St. George in the winter, however, we were emboldened and set aside money for a trip to see Devil's Tower and Mt. Rushmore.  The initial plan was to go in June, which would have been a whole lot cooler (temperature-wise) but other concerns and responsibilities pushed our travel date to mid-July.  This put us past the 4th of July crowds at Rushmore and also helped us avoid the Sturgis biker rally craziness in August.  (Saw it once, totally don't need to see it again!)

We had hoped to leave on the 14th, and then on the 16th, and then on the morning of the 17th, but Chad's work reality intruded and we finally we able to take off in the afternoon on the 17th.  Chad had been working psycho hours to make our vacation happen so I was in charge of packing.  I was very concerned that I would leave behind something we desperately needed and I have some kind of nervous tic...I was not going to leave until the house was CLEAN, so in between tracking down rarely used camping equipment and scrubbing floors I was slowly going nuts.  Thank heavens for Heather!  She helped me pack and held down the fort while I ran to various stores to pick up last minute items.  She saved my sanity and has been such a tender mercy to me.  She always seems to show up at the right time.  The only things Heather and I didn't do were pack Chad's things (because that would be weird and that way he would know exactly what was in his bag) and hoist the all-weather bag full of our camping gear on top of the van.  When Chad arrived, he and I managed the bag o' stuff and tied it down with a multitude of bungee cords (that bag was the best!), packed up the kids with all their pillows plus their 1 requested toy and stuffed animal, put the coolers in place for road-related snackage, and were on our way to the Wharton's who had, in a moment of insanity, agreed to go along with us.

View from our campsite.

After a 6+ hour drive, we arrived at our first destination on the outskirts of Casper Wyoming.  It was so nice to walk into the loving arms of family!  After we got the kids settled down to sleep we had a nice visit with Sandra and Keith and then went to our bed to crash.  The next day was spent getting the Wharton's all ready to go and by four in the afternoon we were on our way to Devil's Tower.  The light was still good when we got our first glimpse of the tower.  I remembered, from a family trip back in the day, that the tower stood alone in a plain and that it would rise up unexpectedly as we drove closer.  We were so excited to catch a glimpse that we mistook a huge water tower in the distance for the real thing and even started filming.  HA!  Finally, though, it came into view and we enjoyed the beautiful drive to our campsite, which was within the park and right in the shadow of the famous igneous intrusion.  We set up camp and then ate spaghetti by the light of Keith's handy-dandy propane lantern.  That guy is the camping gadget man!  He had everything we thought we needed plus stuff we totally needed and never would have thought of.  I highly recommend him for all your camping trips!

Wow!  Somebody is grumpy in the morning!!

Casa de Wharton for the duration of our trip.

 We woke in the morning to a totally blue sky and a fabulous view.  Chad and I handled breakfast, since the Wharton's had made dinner, and I melted the tongs on one of Keith's camping forks which I was using to cook bacon (he was really nice about it).  After eating bacon and eggs we broke camp, collected the kiddos from their wanderings and headed up to the see Devil's Tower.

The kids totally wanted to camp in this teepee at the base of the trail.

The real bosses plan our route.

Those are some tough kids!

View from the trail.

He is too adorable!!

  We decided to start off with the hike, which was 1.3 miles, and which the kids handled like champs.  At the end, Mckenna's energy started to flag and since Sandra was helping Eli, who had tripped on a root and scraped himself up, I picked her up and carried her to the end.  When Grant saw that I was carrying Mckenna, he went to Sandra and totally mooched a ride off of her.  We ended our visit with a tour of the visitor's center where Merritt committed to memory the Native American origin stories for the tower.  After a wrong turn which ended up giving us a great long distance view of Devil's Tower, we ate lunch at a spot near our campsite and then headed toward Deadwood.

Well, we're melting from the heat but we're having fun!

Long distance view.

 Chad was interested to see the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, but when we got to the city we found that the only thing you can do in Deadwood for free is breathe.  They actually charge you to go into the cemetery!  Sheesh! We decided to protest this lunacy by boycotting the cemetery and headed instead into Rapid City where we snagged hamburgers for dinner and then drove to our camping spot for the night, dodging deer along the way (good driving Sandra!).  By the time we located it, it was very dark, so we set up our tents with the help of our car headlights and went to sleep with no idea that Keith had found us a beautiful and amazing place to camp.      

Sunrise at our awesome camping spot.

Wild animals in the woods.

A Decade of Merritt

Merritt is 10.  W-O-W!!  What the heck happened?  Where did the time go?  Can it really be true that my first born child will never be a single digit age again?  How quickly we burst out of a childhood and stand on the threshold of teenage life.  Is he considered a tween now?  Heaven forfend!  Thankfully, he may be 10 but he is still a child, my child, for a while longer yet.  He'll still wear a crown at Burger King...

He still likes dinosaurs (and will wear aforementioned crown to the museum)...

He still does a great cheeser...

He still likes to play in the mud (and keep his kids meal toy on hand for adventures)...

He still likes to ham it up (especially if there are giant megalodon teeth around)...

He still likes to dig in the sand for buried treasure or dinosaur bones...

He still wishes on his birthday candles...

Happy birthday my son!  You mean the world to me.  Stay a child for a bit longer, okay, and always be a child at heart.

The 4th

I love the 4th of July...it is the one day of the year where I put my foot down and say, "Yes we are going to a parade!"  We went out early and picked a spot toward the beginning of the parade route so that we could get Joseph home for a nap before he got too loopy.  We'd never sat in that area before and didn't realize it was almost completely lacking in shade.  I might as well have parked us right next to the sun itself it was so hot but hey, we got to see floats, listen to marching band music, salute the flag, cheer for the men and women serving our country AND eat partially melted salt water taffy.  Now that's what I call patriotic fun!  Plus, it seemed like our entire neighborhood bought arial fireworks so we just sat on our front step and watched the craziest show.  We even bought our own modest set of low key fireworks and had fun with that.  What a great day!

We rotated the kids through the stroller, which was our only shade.

Grant hanging out.

The sun is blinding me!

I don't care how hot it is!  I'm just gonna run around like a crazy baby!

Stop taking my picture!!