Spring Break Part Two: Mount Rushmore Detour

We decided to do a "quick" detour on the way home through the Black Hills in South Dakota so that we could see Mount Rushmore. We'd camped there at the Silven Lake Campground several years ago with the Trelevens, and they'd treated us to a well guided Black Hills experience then, but Timmy didn't remember anything...no wonder since he was about 3!

The detour ended up taking SO MUCH longer than we'd planned...by the time we got to the Black Hills we'd been driving for 7 1/2 hours...

Note to self and others!: after being crammed into a car with absolutely zero extra space is NOT, I repeat NOT the time to stop at one of these "vistas"...I mean death wish dropoffs with NOTHING to stop some squirrly headed kids from plummeting down ravines and being spring breakfast for all the hungry bears whom I'm sure were being rudely awakened by all our whooping and hollering! Of course, it had been my somewhat unpopular idea to go on the Needles Highway for a bit before we went to Mount Rushmore anyway, so I had nobody to blame for the sudden death of my children but me. The instant their unlaced

tennis shoes hit the loose gravel next to the puny little one wire fence some well-intentioned insurance adjuster had put up, I knew I'd made a BIG mistake. Sure it was beautiful...stunning in fact...and I enjoyed exactly none of it! The kids took off in four directions, out on ledges, up cliffs...you name it. No force of nature or parental threat could stop them... take a look at these pics and you'll see what I mean...

But first,

here they are all alive and happy... this may have to be next year's Christmas Pic.

Behind this rock is a sheer dropoff!!!

Whoopee. Freaked me out. This was way past the fence, my friends...way past the fence!

And they had absolutely no business being here either! This is taken on a full zoom....the fist in the air signifies that I IGNORED MY MOM ALL THE WAY UP HERE AND THERE WAS NOTHING SHE COULD DO ABOUT IT!!!! "HI MOMMMM!"

Here's a picture of Zach the Rock Climber...actually, these pictures were taken to simulate Zach being the tough rock climer. Andrew is in reality laying on the ground

to take this and Zach is all of a foot or two off the ground. It is one

of our peculiar pastimes to take these sort of pictures...

Again, no worries... it's the pictures I was too freaked out to take that were the problem...

Tim had to get in on it too! Notice the strained facial expression...facial expression is key to making it look really real...




Again, the hero woodsman rock climber risking life and limb....all the while Katie and Timmy had gone missing until they called from way up above.....somewhere....on some precipice....

After making everybody mad at me by forcing them to stop at the Needles, I then continued to make everybody mad at me by shooing their behinds BACK IN THE CAR before anyone was even close to ready to go...my heart couldn't take any more! Tim wanted to get the kids out of the car again at one of the tunnels, but I begged him not to...let's just get to Mount Rushmore...

MOUNT RUSHMORE

Just so you know I was actually on this trip...

They are so cute!

Icecream Cones the Size of Your Head: Butter Pecan


"Mountain Hair"

There were absolutely no Tims, Zachs or Andrews on the monument building crew, but there was a Gustav L.....obviously a relative!

Like we hadn't had enough!....here we go again!

This was pretty fun...and soft.

Pretty safe here, huh?

THINK AGAIN!!!! See the dots that are my children...right there in the middle?!!Same picture!
I was in the car.

After another couple of hours of driving, we pulled into some old cowboy town in the middle of nowhere South Dakota....the pool was cool...

Everything was cowboy themed, including our bedspreads....here's part of one...

Here's a tired little cowpoke at the chuckwagon breakfast. Taxidermy is alive and well in South Dakota, judging from the thirty or more stuffed animals of all sorts whom we joined for a bite in the lobby. It was a bit creepy, and kinda hard to eat with all those eyes looking at you...but then we went outside...


...here's the view as we left. Eerie.

not that Lily minded...