july 2

excerpts from my journal

We got in so late last night, I really had no intention of waking up so early, but it's raining again, or maybe it's still. Who knows? So David and I are discussing options. I wonder if this is what my folks did when we went to Bear Lake and it rained the entire time. I know they bought a trailer right after that.

We had a huge day yesterday. It started with grilled breakfast (David almost always cooks breakfast when we're camping).

It was our first day at Mt. Rushmore. How do I describe the excitement we were all feeling? Palpable is the best word I can think of. It's a good thing it's not farther away from our camp ground, I think the kids would have exploded.

What can I say? Mt. Rushmore is totally cool. They have three different Jr. Ranger programs: 0-4, 5-12, 13+, so all my kids got to participate. Ella has always been too young, and Sarah had deemed herself too old. Anyway, we spent the morning wandering around the visitors center and such.

It started raining. A few light sprinkles, really nothing to worry about. By the time we were in our car riding out it was pouring. And there were huge lightning strikes. Obviously if we went back to the campground we would be trapped inside a tent trying to keep four children entertained. So, we went to Crazy Horse Memorial instead.

It was still raining when we finished, so we drove into Hill City (just like Park City) and Rapid City (more like Provo) to do our grocery shopping. It was decided that we would have dinner at Mt. Rushmore and stay for the lighting ceremony. We did, and it too was pretty cool. Ella fell asleep and didn't care one whit about the lit presidents.