Wednesday, or, It's Time You Learned How To Do This, Too!

And so I must learn to blog. It begins by learning how to post a new entry. Sara has ordered generously offered to let me post the entry she composed for Wednesday but has been unable to post due to the dicey nature of most RV Park wi-fi systems. So, without further ado, I give you, Wednesday
We slept in a bit and went to the pancake tent for breakfast. All you can eat pancakes for $2.50. Liam and Gray each ate 5 pancakes. Plus bacon for Gray. Plus sausage for Liam.

Pat and I did a bit of repacking while the boys went and played on the jumping pillow and worked in a game of putt-putt and some waterslide time. All here at the Mount Rushmore KOA. My guess is the boys think KOA stand for Kind Of Awesome.

Back to Mount Rushmore for some daytime activities. The boys wanted to finished their Junior Ranger badges and we still needed to walk the trail that takes you to the base of the mountain. Thankfully it was much cooler today than yesterday so we took the strenuous trail to the sculptors studio and saw some of the equipment used to carve the mountain and the model from which the mountains carved. Rushmore is so much smaller than Crazy Horse, but we enjoyed it more. "Because it is finished!" piped up voices it the back. Like those children have ever finished anything...

We needed a few provisions - razors (since both Pat and I are getting a bit wooly in face and leg and for the life of me I cannot find the razors I packed for us) and gas and ice (the two permanent items on our list) so we headed into Rapid City.

Gray thinks that fishing is the best thing ever, so we headed to Cabela's so he could check out the fishing 'stuff.' This Cabela's is much smaller than the Bass Pro normally go to, but it had a big display of flies. He wanted one of everything, so to reign him in a bit, Pat had him talk to the fishing section employee who guided Gray to a reasonable amount of gear that might possibly work in Yellowstone.

From Rapid City we headed to Belle Fouche. Why? Because it has been the Geographical center of the United States since Alaska and Hawaii were admitted into the Union in 1959, that's why. We took lots of photos on the granite marker beyond the visitors center and debated going the 20 or so miles north to the field that is the actual center, but we had someplace to go and needed to be there near sunset.

 So we took the scenic route to Devil's Tower. We went through several towns that were marked on our map and seemed like real towns with populations of oh, 50. One place seemed to have more old (read junk) cars on the side of the road than people. We first glimpsed Devil's Tower from a turnout miles away. Pat and I commented that the drive to Devil's Tower looked just like it did in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, go figure.

We got to the park long after it had closed but were still able to drive to the top. So we did. We took lots of pictures of the west side of the tower. The light was fantastic. There is a prairie dog town at the base of the hill that leads to the tower, so we stopped and checked out the prairie dogs.

"Do not feed the prairie dogs! They have fleas that carry disease and can bite. Do not reach into holes! Black Widow spiders and rattlesnakes can live in prairie dog burrows." How did we survive before such warnings? We kept our distance and listened to the chatter, took some pictures and watched them go in and out of their burrows.

At the base of the park is a KOA. The boys were psyched! Woohoo! Kind Of Awesome! Uh, yeah, not so much. As with most things, there are many quality levels in campgrounds. This campground has location, location, location. Most sites a view of the tower. We got here late, without reservations and have to walk, oh, ten feet to get a view. Sigh. I suppose we'll have to live with it. For what it's worth, they do show Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Every. Single. Night. But I didn't notice a mountain of mashed potatoes on the menu at the cafe. You can't always get what you want.