Our Cross Country Adventure, Part 1

We left Provo the afternoon of Saturday, May 15th. We drove to Rawlins, WY, just a random place to stop that wasn't too far of a drive for the day. There was nothing special or very memorable from that stop. We stayed at a Super 8. The bathroom reeked of cigarette smoke and there was animal hair on the sheets of one of the beds. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Our original plan for our trip was to stay at Super 8's or something similar to save on costs. As you'll see our plans changed as we went. On Sunday we drove to Rapid City, SD. South Dakota is a beautiful state. We hit a crazy rainstorm, possibly hail, on the way. I was scared. Fortunately Brent was driving, but it was still scary. You couldn't see the road because the rain was coming down so hard. We stayed at a La Quinta. It was a fabulous hotel. There was an indoor waterpark at the hotel. It was nice to let the boys play. Elliott was brave enough to go on all the slides in the kids area. He almost went on one of the really big slides, but about half way up the stairs he decided it was way too high. He had a lot of fun. Monday morning we headed out to Mount Rushmore. What an amazing sight. That was one of the highlights of our trip. It was fascinating to see the mountain in person and learn about its creation. There is definitely nothing that compares with it. The avenue of flags is really cool too. It was fun to look around for different state flags. A couple interesting facts:

- Each president's face is as tall as the entire Great Sphinx of Egypt, measuring 60 feet from the chin to the top of the head.
- The president's noses are 20 feet long, each mouth 18 feet wide and the eyes are 11 feet across.
Needless to say, it is huge! Elliott had read about Mount Rushmore in a Flat Stanley book, so he was excited to see it as well.

View from the viewing platform.



View from the Presidential Trail.

The boys were good sports. Elliott did really well. Derek wasn't very interested in this visit and before we were done he had had enough.

After leaving Mount Rushmore we took a detour through Badlands National Park. For the most part we just drove through. We stopped at a couple of spots to see the view. It was spectacular. Badlands is one of the world's richest mammal fossil beds. It was interesting to see these huge formations out one side of the car and out the other side there were huge prairies. We even saw prairie dog settlements (I didn't get a picture of those). Pretty cool. Enjoy the view.

After our sightseeing was finished for the day, we made our way through South Dakota and stayed in a tiny town called Murdo. We stayed in another Super 8. The quality was better than the first one, but the boys spent a long time teasing/yelling at each other when they were supposed to be sleeping. It was then that I decided we needed something bigger for the rest of our trip. No more sleeping practically on top of each other. After our trip Brent's parents told us there was a tornado that went through Murdo just a day or two after we left. I'm glad we were ahead of the storm.