Having A Ball In Sioux Falls!

We spent our Labor Day weekend making a quick trip to visit our favorite South Dakota people.

Kailyn was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. Isn't she a beautiful, grown-up girl?

Caden, age 4

Ava, age 5 months. Shelly and Ken claim Ava is a cranky night owl. I find that hard to believe-she's such a sweetheart during the day.

Jordan, age 6

Chase, age 2.

Here we are with Kailyn, right before her baptism.

Kailyn and her grandparents. It was fun to all be together.

Megan was wildly popular with the Bassett kids. She even watched Word Girl with them. Megan can now read all kinds of new words.

We spent Saturday afternoon exploring the falls of Sioux Falls.

There was a gorgeous, large park you could wander around,

play in the slime,

and (oops!) fall in.

Jordan and Kailyn had fun climbing down the cliffs.

We eventually ended up at the cafe/ice cream shop, where Ava found us this steal of a deal: if you buy one meal for the price of two meals, you get a second meal totally free! Wow! These South Dakotans know how to reel you in!

The kids, surprisingly enough,  chose a rainbow ice cream

which will hopefully fade before Jordan's first prom.

Next we went to a science park. Can I just say that South Dakota knows how to make communities attractive for families? Here Megan shows her entourage how to make a human sundial. 

 There were swings and

things to climb on.

Ava may look like she's having fun with Dad, but ignore that happy face.

I know she was terrified to be flying so high, despite her joyous giggle.

We also drove by Ken's hospital. Okay, technically it's not Ken's hospital, he just works here.

This is the children's wing of Ken's hospital. Okay, once again, I know it's not exactly Ken's hospital, but if Ken were going to own a hospital, I vote for this one.

After church on Sunday and lunch together, we headed homeward.  Along the way we stopped at the Dakota Badlands.

We also made a quick stop at the famous Wall Drug Store.

We spent the night in Rapid City, and got up this morning to visit the Presidents.

Megan is suppose to look like she's holding up the mountain, but once again my technical skills were AWOL and I just made Megan look like a Price is Right model.

I found this warning in the Rushmore bathroom. Darn. Now I have to take my rocks home dirty.

 We also stopped to visit this monument to Crazy Horse, which has been in the works for 63 years. It was a big disappointment.  Not only was it expensive to get in, but only about 10 percent is done (eventually he will be riding a horse) and the viewing spot was about a mile away unless you wanted to pay even more money to take a bus and get a little closer.

Of course, no visit to Rapid City is complete without a stop at the eerie and weird "Cosmos House".
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Megan demonstrated the mysterious force.

We stopped by Reptile Gardens so that Megan could pet the turtle she rode on 17 years ago.  She thought it had shrunk a bit. We also saw the bird show, snake show, and alligator wrestling.

We knew it was time to go home when we found Megan inappropriately flirting with the locals...

We will spend tomorrow packing up, then on to Idaho. *Sniff*

Strictly Business, Part 2

 On our way home from Utah, we decided to take a detour....can you guess where the three of us went?

Yup, Yellowstone, home of steamy geysers and spectacular colors

and visual reminders of what will happen if you forget to clean out your tub.

Megan was wanting to bottle the sulfur smell and bring it home.

We haven't been through Yellowstone since Megan was a toddler. We had forgotten how beautiful it is.

We came to this large drop-off and could see dozens of hats at the bottom. I thought they had blown off of people's heads in this windy area and become unreachable, but Megan said this is a Yellowstone tradition-- you throw your hat into the pool, like money in a water fountain at the mall.  Hmmm.

I'm going to have Stan add this water feature to our backyard.

We passed this sign several times, warning us not to touch the water in the area because it is surprisingly hot...

...which explains why Megan is touching this water, which is surprisingly hot.

We saw plenty of wildlife in the park, including this elk. If you look closely to the left of the elk, you can see a second elk hiding in the grass. We figured it was a mom and baby.

We were wrong--it is just a couple of elk buddies out for a stroll.

Of course, no trip to Yellowstone is complete without a visit to Old Faithful

 which we were told was set to go off in 10 to 20 minutes.

So we settled in and waited

 and waited

and waited.

Finally, 24 minutes beyond the last projected time, we got some action. Let's just say Old Faithful is really Old Semi-Faithful.

Megan contemplated taking a little dive

but once again, there were signs reminding you not to trip. You know you're in trouble when you have to be reminded not to do face-plants. Naturally, Megan ignored the signage and tripped away....

Watch out, Megan! It's a looooong way down!

Stan and Megan forgot to send me the memo about what we were wearing today. 

I wore green and blue. 

 How embarrassing.

 

This is a great year for travel in the West. Everything is so green (or yellow and purple) with all of the rain we've been having.

And yes, it rained.

Good thing--it takes a lot of water to run these things.

"The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone"

 Good news--Megan found the perfect chair for her dorm room.

 We stopped to view the grizzly down here. What? You don't see it??? Trust me, he's down there---there were 217 people lining the top of this cliff watching him.

This is the waterfall that used to have an enormous boulder sitting at the top of the falls. At some point during the stone age, when we were kids, it fell.

As we left the park, we passed a huge herd of buffalo. 

We figured there were 500-600 buffalo in this valley.

It wasn't long before we were back in Montana. We knew we were near home when we saw all the snow.  The route out of Yellowstone goes through Cook City Pass.

This is my least favorite road in Montana--the sign at the top says "Speed Limit 70", but the path is down an incredibly steep mountain with a series of tight hairpin turns on a narrow road.  You're lucky if you can negotiate the road at more than 20 mph. When you get to the bottom, and the road straightens out, the speed limit drops to 60. I love Montana logic.