Black Hills Adventure

Thursday July 3rd
Fred and I and the 3 boys and my mom took off about 2 in the afternoon. Made it to Worthington before we stopped for a snack of chocolate éclairs and cream puffs. We stopped in Mitchell for the night. We visited the Corn Palace. I had read on-line that the palace would never be bare, but they were under a big remodel and the whole front of the building was clear of corn and had construction barriers and fencing up. They did have some murals on the side of the building and on the inside, but it just wasn't as impressive as I'd built it up to be. We'll stop back next time to see the final product.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Mitchell which had a slide that Jacob and Gavin were tall enough to go on. There was a kiddy pool with little slide for Wyatt too, so everyone was happy to play in the pool for a while that evening.

Friday July 4th
In the morning we wandered around the parking lot and found 24 different state license plates. Thus started our challenge to try to find all the states' license plates.

We drove through the Badlands on our way to Rapid City on Friday. We made a stop to hike around a bit. The boys loved that and wanted to do more of that. We thought maybe we'd find another spot to stop and hike around, but we didn't. We did stop at the visitor center and thought about driving an extra loop in the Badlands to try to see a herd of buffalo, but by the time we got tot he turn off we'd had enough of driving slowly on those windy roads.

I'd like mom and the boys to remember the trip like this...

 But, they may remember it more like this....

We drove into Wall for a late lunch at the famous drug store and did some exploring/photo taking in the "backyard" there. Then we finished the journey to Rapid City and checked into the Grand Gateway Hotel. The boys went right to the pool, which had an unsupervised slide that landed in 3 foot of water, so even Wyatt could do it. We should have kept count of how many times those boys went up those steps and down those slides, I'm guessing over 100.

After some pool time, we took a drive down to Keystone, thru some of the black hills, and to Custer State Park's wildlife loop. While on our drive it hailed. About quarter size hail at the largest probably, but it sounded horrible and we thought for sure we'd have damage, but we didn't. We did see a beautiful double rainbow spanning the whole sky after that rain. We also saw a pronghorn, the group of burros, deer, a herd of buffalo off in the distance, and a lone buffalo right next to the road. We drove to Custer, the city, for fireworks. The show was pretty good, but traffic after was pretty crappy afterwards.

Saturday July 5th
The boys got to swim before we headed out for the day. Then we headed to Bear Country, a drive thru wildlife park. We got there at the busiest time of the day on the busiest weekend of the year. So, we did a lot of sitting still and the boys had to pee in a Mineral Water bottle, but we got to see lots of animals including the bears. My favorite was the walk thru baby area at the end, the little bears playing with each other were very cute.

We went into Keystone next. We took a chairlift up a hill to a café for lunch with a view of Mt Rushmore. Grandma Nancy took the chairlift back down while the rest of us road the alpine slides. Jacob and Gavin complained that they didn't get to go fast enough down the slide and wanted to go down again, but we were off to see Mt Rushmore. The kiddos fell asleep on the short drive to Mt Rushmore, so we let them nap a bit before heading in to check out the heads. At Mt Rushmore we listened to a sculpture talk and walked/climbed the steps along the presidential trail. Then we got some ice cream before heading to Cosmos.

Cosmos, meaning "world order", is a spot where they believe a strange phenomenon is causing trees to grow towards a central area and a different force of gravity seems to take pull on you, especially in the little cabin set on the hill. The boys got to crack open geodes, rocks with crystals in the center, at the end of the tour.

Sunday July 6th
We got an early start to the day, learning from the day before that mid-day is not the time to hit the tourist spots. Mom and I dropped the boys off at Reptile Gardens and we went to church - a good excuse not to go to Reptiles Gardens, for sure. After we picked up the boys, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get sandwich stuff and headed back to the hotel. We had lunch poolside and the boys swam for a while.

We headed to Wind Cave National Park and took a tour of one of the longest caves in the world. We walked down 300 steps/20 stories. We got to experience complete darkness and the boys even cooperated for the complete silence portion too. Luckily for me the cave had boxwork on the ceiling, which makes it hard for bats to navigate in so I didn't have to worry about bats on the tour.

We made another drive thru Custer State Park and encountered a bunch of buffalo on the roads, which was slightly unnerving. We also saw the burros again and the boys gave them some apple cores and some chips.

Monday July 7th
We drove down to Hot Springs for the day. We toured the Mammoth Site and enjoyed a day at Evan's Plunge, the hot springs fed water park.

Tuesday July 8th
Hit the road at 6 am Rapid City time (7am MN time) and made the drive home to Chaska in about 9 hours including our lunch stop in Worthington.

Soccer and Baseball Seasons

Gavin chose to do soccer again this spring. It was his first year on an all boy team. There was less crying, but still a bit of daydreaming by some of Gavin's teammates. Gavin liked to defend more than play offense, but still scored a few goals. He definitely saved a bunch of scores on defense.

Gavin also got to do a 6 week baseball league on Friday nights. He shows up in his brothers old clothes and looks like a little pro, then steps up to the plate and either beams the pitcher/coach or hits it to the outfield. I guess maybe there is something to dressing the part.

Jacob chose to play baseball this spring. He was on the Dragons team with a bunch of the same kids from last year and with the same coaches, who are awesome with the kids. Jacob was pretty good at catching and 1st base. He pitched a couple times, once he settled down from the pressure he did all right with that too. He wanted to pitch more, but he didn't want to practice on his own outside of baseball practice. Playoffs concluded while Jacob was at church camp, his team won the championship and was so excited for his team. So sweet, I was afraid he'd be disappointed that he didn't get to play those last games, but he didn't say anything like that.

Summer So Far

Summer break got off to a rough start when our boy dog, Harley, passed away on the evening of the last day of school. We were at Jacob's baseball game when he decided to lie down for the last time on the kitchen floor. He had been having some seizures over the last couple weeks and was 12 years old, so we knew it was coming, but it was still hard on the boys. Luckily, Grandma and Grandpa Middendorf were down to watch Jacob play baseball and take care of the boys on their first day of summer vacation. Mary Ann and I came home first while the guys were still at the park, so we found him. I didn't think the boys needed to see him, so Gene and Fred were going to bury him while we went to the Dairy Queen for a treat. The boys decided that they did need to see him, so they went to say good-bye as he was laid in the ground at the top of the hill in the backyard. Jacob couldn't bring himself to play in the backyard for a while, it just made him too sad. He said he wanted to go back to being 8, when Grandpa and Harley were still alive. Meanwhile, Wyatt's walking around blurting out "Harley's dead" at random moments, which wasn't helping Jacob much either.

Since that ordeal, the boys have had a pretty good summer. They've been in Eden Prairie park camps most weeks. They play with kids, sing songs, do crafts, and play lots of games - Statues, Dodgeball, Hunger Games, more. Wyatt comes home singing all sorts of songs. I was worried they'd be complaining about having to get out of the house every morning, but I haven't had any complaints about going to park camp and when I pick them up, after they've been there from 9 AM to 4 PM, they sometimes aren't ready to go.

The also did VBS at our church. Counselors from Luther Park in Wisconsin came and lead the week of praise, learning, and fun. All the boys learned a lot of new songs that week too.