Conclusion and Closing Thoughts

We arrived back home in VB Sunday night around 9:30pm.  After unloading the van, Malone and B-saurus promptly started playing with their toys that they hadn't seen for 3 weeks.  Kakes and Pat disappeared upstairs to read and Papa started getting ready for bed since he'd have to be at work at 7am.  As for myself, I started in on laundry and sorting through phone messages and mail. 

Monday morning everyone who didn't have to go to work slept in.  B snuck in around 8:30am and woke me up.  Malone was next at around 9am.  Pat, who usually doesn't sleep past 7am, came downstairs around 10am.  My sleeping beauty (Kakes) didn't grace us with her presence until noon. 

We had a fantastic trip.  Overall, the experience was good.  At no point did I regret embarking on this adventure.  There were a few challenges but nothing out of the ordinary.  I would have no problems with attempting another trip of this magnitude. 

Trip Statistics:

• Miles Travelled:  7,223
• States Driven Through:  Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio (16 Total)
• Pink Potty Usage:  6

Overall Trip:  Priceless

Last Few Days of the Grand Journey

South Dakota, between Rapid City and Sioux Falls, is sparsely populated.  Originally (before the flat tire) we had hoped to make it to Sioux Falls to spend the night.  That wasn't going to happen.  It was after 7:00pm when we left Keystone, SD so we decided to stop in Murdo which was a little over 2 hours away.

I first called the Days Inn in Murdo and they didn't have any suites available.  The lady I spoke to highly recommended a place called Landmark Country Inn.  She thought that it would be perfect for us.  I'd never heard of it but took the phone number from her just in case.  Next up, I tried to call a Best Western.  The cell service on the section of I-90 we were on was spotty at best and I kept getting cut off.  They didn't have a suite either and their regular rooms were a little pricey for the location and the fact that we just needed a place to sleep.  I was frustrated so when we pulled off at a rest area, I took over driving and let Papa find us a room.

He called the Landmark Inn and was on the phone for close to half an hour.  While he talked to the lady who had answered, she talked up the place.  The room we were to have was L shaped and spacious.  There were 2 queen beds, a futon, whirlpool in the room, 2 TVs with one of them in the bathroom, a pool heated to 90 degrees that was open until midnight, breakfast in the morning...it sounded like a great place.  He gave them his credit card info and booked the room. 

Around 9 pm we arrived and just from looking at the place, I had my doubts.  We hadn't had dinner yet so we headed into town to look for a place to eat.  Murdo is a very small town.  I'm sure it has it's charms but at that time of night, I wanted a chain fast food restaurant so we could quickly feed the kids and head to bed.  Were there any?  Nope.  And all the "restaurants" in town closed at 10pm.  We stopped at the Star Restaurant which was kind of like a diner.  It was okay.  Slow service and expensive but at least everyone got something to eat.

We headed to our room.  Papa tells me we have to open the door (that's ground level) and go down the stairs.  What!?!  Yes, our room was in the basement.  I opened the door to a small room with 2 full beds with purple satin comforters and pillows.  The carpet is a black, funky floral and the futon is a wicker love seat.  ???  The room was damp and musty smelling and our whirlpool tub was smaller than our bathtub at home (I didn't know that was possible).  I was not happy one bit.  Kakes started shrieking that the hotel room looked like one she saw in a nightmare of hers and asked to sleep in the minivan.  

Our "futon"

Good thing we had the air mattress 'cause there was no way I was going to let the kids sleep on that floor.  In attempting to use the remote control, we noticed it was chained to the wall.  As was the alarm clock.  We went to bed and set the alarm for 5:00am.  We left our room to check out breakfast...stale donuts.  It was no surprise that when we headed out there weren't many cars left in the hotel parking lot.

 

The only neat thing about the hotel

On the way to our stop for Friday night (Rochester, MN), Papa saw the signs for the Corn Palace.  He remembered stopping there with his family when he was a kid. 

 

The kids and I

It's interesting that they redo the Corn Palace every year.  The pictures they create are impressive.  I had noticed a fabric and textile warehouse as we drove into Mitchell, SD so I headed that way with Kakes while Papa took the other 3 kids and my camera.

 

We had originally planned on being in Rochester, MN around lunch time so that we could meet a friend of mine, Jessica, and visit Oxbow Park.  The zoo part of the park closes at 4pm and unfortunately, we didn't make it into Rochester until around that time.  Instead, we ended up meeting Jessica and her 3 kids at Foster-Arend Park. 

 

Jessica's oldest, N and Malone playing together

Bsaurus

Kakes by her "fish habitat"

My oldest 3 and N having a good time

It was a nice break at the park and I enjoyed spending a little bit of time visiting with Jessica.  This is the third time we've met in real life and each time it's been great.  She's one of those people that you can pick right up where you left off and it's like no time has gone by since the last time you saw each other. 

After time at the park, we headed back to our hotel.  Papa took the kids (minus B who had passed out in the car on our short drive to the hotel) into the pool.  Having pools for the kids to swim at has been great.  It exhausts them so much that falling asleep in a hotel room is no problem.

We left Rochester, MN at a decent time and headed towards home.  Saturday, wasn't the easiest day.  Papa was pushing to get us to Dayton, OH for the night and wasn't too keen on stopping.  After 2 kids wetting their pants, you'd think he'd have caught on that pushing it wasn't going to work.  It took Kakes almost getting sick in the car for him to realize that sometimes you have to give up your timeline and take a break.  I'm not sure what got to Kakes, maybe food poisoning?  We were at a rest stop for close to 2 hours before she felt well enough to ride in the car again.   

We hit Dayton around 10pm and he, once again, took the kids to the pool.  We didn't set an alarm this time for the morning as even without one, we'd been getting up around 7:30am.  I guess we were all tired though because it was 9:36am when one of us woke up.  We had to rush a bit to get breakfast as the hotel stopped serving at 10am.  It wasn't until 11 that we started on our last bit of driving to reach home. 

Mount Rushmore, Here We Come

Leaving Yellowstone, via the East Entrance, you enter into the Shoshone National Forest.  The mountain scenery is just as beautiful in Wyoming as it is in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana.

The weather was overcast with an occasional sprinkle of rain.  We headed further east on a 2 lane, winding road that entered into Bighorn National Forest.  We stopped at the Shell Falls wayside for a quick potty break and ended up checking the sights out.

"Take a picture of us touching this rock"

The road we were travelling on

Another waterfall!

The scenery through the Bighorns is gorgeous.  There are craggy mountains, valleys with rolling hills, stunning views across the plains.  We saw some mule deer and a moose on our drive but didn't get a chance to stop and take pictures.  After all, on winding mountain roads there isn't much of a shoulder.  If you're driving out that way, I highly recommend taking the Cloud Peak Skyway.

 

Malone wanted us to find the end of the rainbow

Sheep!

Looking back towards Cloud Peak

We stopped for the night in Buffalo, WY.  The next morning it was onwards to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore.  Driving towards our intended stop, I remembered a friend (Cindy) mentioning an animal park that you could drive through that she had visited while in SD.  I looked in the travel guides I had for the area and found the park...Bear Country.

 

Reindeer

Arctic Wolf

Bighorn Sheep

Hello Mr. Black Bear

"Don't these tourists have something better to do?"

At first the experience was kind of neat.  When we stopped by the arctic wolf, he sat up and started howling and 2 more wolves came up over a hill.  Our first sight of the black bears was great.  Here we were having a chance to see them mere feet away from us, with no worries about injury as long as we stayed in the car with our windows up.  The kids were fascinated.  However, as we drove further in, it became sad.  All of the animals looked miserable in the heat and most were panting.  The amount of black bears they had (we counted over 50 in one little area) was excessive.  It went from, "Oh look!  A bear!" to "Huh, look.  Another bear.".  I'm not an animal activist by any means but the conditions the animals were in was depressing.  It was much better being in Yellowstone and seeing animals in their natural habitat. 

We only did the driving part of Bear Country and headed back on the road towards Mt. Rushmore.

Heading up the road, the minivan started making a funny noise.  We pulled to the shoulder and I opened my door to look...

 

Curses!

We had a flat tire.  Out came the minivan manual so we could find out where the jack/spare tire/etc. were located.  Luckily, Papa was with us which meant that changing the tire wasn't a big deal.  An inconvenience, yes, but not a disaster. 

 

Seconds before he gave me a one finger salute for taking pictures while he changed the tire

I admit, I found the whole incident kind of funny.  I'm surprised something like this didn't happen sooner.   We used the GPS to find a Firestone and drove back into Rapid City to get a replacement tire.  With all said and done, it took probably 2 hours out of our day to deal with the tire situation. 

As we headed back towards Mt. Rushmore the weather started to deteriorate.  Storm clouds were rolling in and it was starting to sprinkle again.  We pulled into the parking lot to the sound of thunder.  Did we decide to not see Mount Rushmore?  Heck no.  After all, Kakes wanting to see it was the push for our entire trip.  We headed the opposite direction (towards the monument) from all the other tourists and took a few quick pictures.

 

Blue sky quickly disappearing

After the tire incident, we were running behind, so we weren't able to see the film about Mount Rushmore.  We spent maybe 7 minutes there and then jumped back into the minivan and headed back out to try and make up some of our lost time.

Leaving Yellowstone

The night before, we had arrived back at the hotel room in time for the kids to swim in our hotel's pool.  This one had a curly slide that would shoot the kids across the pool.  Papa took all the kiddos there while I stayed back in the room organizing and uploading pictures. 

The next morning, we were all packed up and ready to head further East.  Our departure from Yellowstone took us through the middle of the park on the one road we hadn't driven yet.  The first stop that looked promising...Virginia Cascades. 

Another waterfall!

Malone next to the creek that led over the falls

Further upstream from the creek, the mosquitoes were horrible.  We've been enjoying the break from those nasty critters on our trip.  The ones here were even worse than back home if that's possible.  I'd left the windows down in the van and unfortunately the minivan was filled with them.  It took almost an hour before we had them out or squished them.

We saw more waterfalls in the Brink of the Lower Falls area.  Also, we saw the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which was probably my favorite part of the day.  Once again, pictures don't show you the true depth of the canyon.  Leaning over the edge of the lookout was enough to make me feel queasy and hold extra tight to the kids, especially B-saurus who had no fear.

 

While at Lower Falls, I had headed back to the car to look for Malone's other sneaker.  Kakes and Malone came with me but quickly became bored as I started to pick up trash and clean out the van.  Kakes asked if they could walk a little ways down the path.  I had no problem with that and thought the path ended a few cars down.  After the rest of our family came back to the car I hollered from the girls to come back. 

No answer.

I walked a little bit down the path and saw it went much further than I had thought.  I hollered again and heard a reply.  It wasn't Kakes and Malone.  It was some other kids playing by their camper. 

At that point, I was starting to get a little concerned.  I walked for about 5 minutes and still no sight of the girls.  The path was getting narrower and quite steep.  I finally passed another person and asked if they had seen 2 girls walking.  They had and sternly said that they didn't think this path was suitable for unsupervised children.  I didn't waste time arguing that I hadn't given them permission to walk this far and sprinted down the path looking for my girls. 

After another agonizing 5-10 minutes, I came across Kakes and Malone.  I was so relieved to see them safe yet so angry that they had taken off that far and scared me.  K started to cry as I admonished her for walking so far away from me.  I had to take a deep breath and give her a hug and explain that I was upset because they had walked out of earshot and when I couldn't find them right away, I'd started to panic.  All's well that ends well...no one was hurt and I hope pray that a lesson was learned.

After those heart stopping adventures, we headed towards the East entrance/exit of the park.  We decided to stop by Yellowstone Lake for our lunch but quickly decided that eating in the car was a better idea.

Cold, choppy lake

The wind had picked up and the weather was turning stormy.  The temp was down in the 50s when we stopped so we picnicked in the minivan instead of on the beach.  Then out of the park we headed.

 

Mountains on East side of park

snow, out of reach but not far up the mountain

Bison deciding he had the right of way