We made it!

We finally made it home at about 1:00 this afternoon. It was a great trip and we saw some fabulous sights. We've got lots more pictures and some great memories! Can't wait to start planning the next trip!

Victor - Did you figure out why we brought the chicken???

June 3rd - Columbus Zoo

We made it to the Columbus Zoo today. It's a great place with lots of great animals. I really wanted to see the polar bears and we were just in time for the 11:00 showing. There are two females and, while we didn't get to see them in the underwater viewing area, we did go upstairs and see them fro behind the window. They're huge beautiful animals and I got some good pictures. We also saw a lot of other neat animals but we probably didn't cover half of the park. It's a really huge place and not all of the animals were out when we went through. We drove to Wilkes Barr, PA to spend the night. It was a long day for us but it got us fairly close to home.

June 2nd

The tornado missed us thank goodness! We did have a very bad thunderstorm though and that was enough to keep me awake most of the night. We got a picture of the sunrise at about 5:30 this morning and the sky was a very strange pinkish-yellow color.
We've accomplished almost everything we set out to do. Today we stopped at The Hat in Davenport, Iowa for lunch. The wings came highly recommended by the guy at AAA. He was right they were huge (about the size of my hand) and delicious! Of course we had to leave the chicken in the truck. She couldn't bear to watch. Hopefully she'll forgive us.
We're staying in Richmond, IN tonight and plan on going to the Columbus Zoo tomorrow morning. After that we're heading home.

Des Moines

We drove from the Badlands to Des Moines Iowa today - a long day of driving! We're staying at the Best Western tonight and we just heard we're under tornado watch until 10:00 tonight. It's about a quarter to eight now. I think I'll go downstairs and help Gary with the laundry. You're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy!!!

South Dakota Badlands

We entered the Badlands National Park at the southwest corner, stopped at the White River Visitors Center and spoke to a couple of the people working there. They're both members of the Sioux Indian tribe and gave us an interesting interview of their culture. We then drove to the north west corner of the park and camped at the Cedar Pass campground. As the sun was setting, we had a beautiful view of the shadows on the rock formations.

Mt. Rushmore

Mount Rushmore was every bit as impressive as the pictures we've all seen.

Crazy Horse Monument

This monument is a work in progress. The man who began this project had died but its being carried on by his wife and 7 of his 10 children. They blast the stone away and then use power and hand tools to refine the image. It just so happened they were blasting part of the monument on Memorial Day while we were there and we got photos of it. They also had a small sculture of what it will look like when finished.