Day 16 (and 17 920 miles)

Today is the 4th of July. We had planned one more stop on our trip, but it just seams like there won’t be time to see anything if we try for one more stop.

Here are the kids at our campsite.

 

 

 

 

We were going to drive 5-6 hours today and finish up the trip with 10-11 hours on Monday, but I have to go to work on Tuesday. So we talked about it and decided to see a few more thing here and then drive straight through to home. Since the fireworks were last night we thought no one would be at Mount Rushmore today… we were so wrong.  There was more traffic today than yesterday. At one point it took 30 minutes to go a half mile. We got close enough to see the “heads” from the other side of the mountain, and decided to go back to Custer State Park.

 

 

  We ended up on a different crazy road. Here is a picture of the pigtail bridge.

 

 

 

 

We pulled over along the way and I got this picture of Mount Rushmore.

 

 

 

 

 

We keep seeing these piles of trees and branches. It turns out these forests are managed to prevent fires. They thin them out in the summers and burn the piles in the winter to keep things from getting out of control.

 

 

Ashley keep telling us she wanted to go back and see the “Goats”. Do you see the goats?  We finally figures it out she wanted to see the burrows again.

 

 

We ended up leaving around 7 PM. As we headed home we keep seeing signs for Wall Drug Store. We stopped and the kids had ice cream.

 

 

We split up the driving, and I drove from 1-5 AM. I wanted to drive until the sun came up to make it easier for Colleen, but that did not work. As soon as Colleen started driving we got into some crazy fog. Colleen ended up with the fog and construction leg of the trip.

 

 

 

We got home at noon, and started cleaning up the camper right away. Something I learned from last year when I left raw chicken in the fridge. Bad idea – how do files get into a sealed fridge? We had everything emptied out by 1 o’clock.

Colleen and I were asleep by 7:30 that night, and it was hard to get up at 5:30 Tuesday morning.

 

We had a great vacation. We drove 3,800 miles through 8 states. We camped in 4 locations saw 4 National Parks, National Forests, and State Parks. We saw close to 30 different animals, and we only had one mishap.  The last day I forgot to put the plug back in the cooler and the book Colleen bought in the Rock Mountains got wet.

 

I finally got to finish the blog on our way to Breda IA for a family reunion, and yes we are going to camp when we get there. (430 miles today).

Day 15 (South Dakota)

Because we did not get in until after midnight we got a late start today. We were not sure what we were going to do because it was raining and cloudy. I really wanted to see Crazy Horse (because I saw it when I was a kid and I wanted to see how much it had changed). We decided to drive by Crazy Horse and see what we could see. It was dark and the clouds were low, so we drove to the town of Custer and had lunch. After we ate it looked like it was going to clear up just enough, so we drove back to Crazy Horse. When we got to the booth I asked “If we can only see half of the mountain do we only have to pay half?”, and to my surprise she said yes. So we got in to see Crazy Horse for $15.

By the time I took this picture it was already 4:00 PM.

 

It has come a long way since I saw it in the 80’s.

 

 

 

Here we all are in front of Crazy House. We are all ready for the rain.

 

 

 

 

We were listening to the radio to try and catch a weather forecast, and we heard that the fireworks at Mount Rushmore were tonight July 3rd. So we drove on over to Mount Rushmore. We were very surprised to see cars parked on the highway 3-4 miles from the top.  Apparently if you want to see the fireworks at Mount Rushmore it is a all day affair. We were able to drive up to the top and take some pictures, but we were not to excited abut climbing up the highway to stand in the rain for 4 hours hoping the fireworks would go off.

 

We asked the kids if they wanted to try and stay for the fireworks or go to Custer State Park and look for Bison. It was unanimous we want to see Bison!

We turned around at the top of Mount Rushmore and drove over to Custer State Park.

 

 

 

 

We saw pronghorn antelope, deer, prairie dogs and a heard of burrows.

 

 

 

There is 18 mile scenic loop around the park and at mile 15 we finally saw a heard of Bison.

Custer State Park has a heard of 1,500 Bison they were one of the first locations to start the preservation of Bison.

 

 

 

The Bison were an both sides of the road. There were hundreds of them. Really cool.

 

 

 

 

This guy was the biggest one out there, and he crossed the road right in front of us. He was pretty scary.

 

 

 

 

We ended up taking some crazy back road back to the campground. It had pigtail bridges, switch backs, and one way tunnels. At the top we saw this rock formation called “The Needles Eye”. I wonder why?

We didn’t get back to the camper until 9:30 and we didn’t get to bed until midnight. At this point of our trip we had no idea what day it was, what time it was, or what was going on in the world, but we were having fun.

Day 14 (550 miles)

Today we left the Grand Tetons and headed to South Dakota.

We got a late start (we did not leave until 10).

Here we are folding up the camper.

We decided to drive back through Yellowstone, so we could see the east side of the park. There was road construction along the way so the drive was extra long.

We stopped along the way and saw a lot more of the park.

Here we are by Yellowstone Lake.

 

 

 

Wyoming is farther along with the Pine Beetle than the Rocky Mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were driving through the park we came up on several stopped cars and a ranger. I asked what they were looking at and they said a Grizzly Bear. The ranger said he was about 100 yards away and could cover that distance in 10 seconds jumping logs and all.

If you look closely right in the middle of the picture there is a brown lump of fur. That is the bear. He got up a couple of times, it was really cool.

 

Here is a picture along the way out of the park.

 

 

 

 

After we left Yellowstone we drove through Cody Wyoming and ended up on Route 14A. As is turns out U. S. Route 14A snakes up the incredibly steep western scarp of the Big Horn Mountains in one of the most amazing set of switchbacks anywhere. Colleen was driving when we started up this mountain and she did not like it. At one point she had the gas peddle to the floor and we were only going 20 and still loosing speed. The car was starting to overheat and Colleen was starting to loose it so I told her to pull over and I would drive.

Around one of the next turns we saw these two moose.

 

 

 

 

Near the top of the mountain there was a rest stop so we stopped to let the car cool down and decided it was a good time for dinner. Alexis was eating a sandwich in the car and felt something on her leg. She jumped out of the car and was freaking out.

 

Here she is after the bug. it was the size of a silver dollar. A little freaky!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We started out again and headed into the clouds literally! Everyone was excited Ashley wanted her window open so she could touch a cloud. This picture was taken at 7 PM and we still had a long way to go.

We did not get to the campground until midnight, and I was worried about setting up the camper after quiet hours. Quiet hours in most campgrounds are 10 pm-6am. After navigating the crazy roads in the dark and rain we found our campsite. As it turned out both of our camping neighbors we up. They ended up staying up for hours they were quite obnoxious.  We got the kids into the camper by 1.  I ended up reading until about 2 because I was wired after the stress of the drive.

Day 13

After the long day we had yesterday we had a quiet day today.

The 4 A’s got there Grand Teton Jr. Ranger badges.

 

 

 

 

 

We rented a couple of canoes and canoed around Jackson Lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the Hohman and Baker kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was our last day with the Bakers they left around 4 PM. Here is a picture of both of our families.

 

It was sad to see them go we had so much fun together.

Day 12

Today we went to Jackson Hole Wyoming to go white water rafting. Jackson Hole was about an hour drive south of where we were camping. Our rafting trip was not scheduled until 2:00, so we went on a Alpine Slide first.

 

 

 

To ride the Alpine Slide you take a chair lift up the mountain, put you “sled” on the track and ride it down. To make the sled go you push a lever forward and you pull it back to slow down.

 

Here we are with our sleds.

I rode with Ashley and she kept telling me to “Slow Down”. We all had a blast.

 

 

 

After the Alpine Slide we ate at Bubba’s Bar-B-Que. It was great even when the power went out. Luckily we already had our food. 

 

 

We got to Jackson Hole White Water Rafting at 1:30, because our trip was at 2. It was actually at 2:30 they just tell you 2 to get you there early. We took a bus to the Snake River and got suited up for the raft. We ended up with a full boat there were 17 of us.

The beginning of the trip was calm and we got to jump out a few times and swim. The first time Captain Ron told us we could swim I don’t think he realized who he had on the boat, because most of us jumped out. I think he was worried he would get us all in before we hit the rapids.

Here we are going in to the “Lunch Counter” rapids.

The rafting was a blast and everyone liked it except Ashley. She was afraid we were going to flip. Captain Ron kept talking about all the things that could go wrong and when the first big wave hit Ashley in the face she was afraid to breath.

We asked Ashley today about the Alpine Slide and rafting and she gave the thumbs up for Alpine Slide and a “eah”for rafting.

After rafting it rained again. We drove back to the campground and because it was late there were animals out everywhere. We saw Bison on the road Elk, deer, and just before we got back to the campsite a wolf stepped out on to the shoulder of the road.

We had a fire and roasted marshmallows.