Our camping trip

We decided at the last minute to go on a camping trip to celebrate the three day weekend.  We have had our eyes on a great camping location for a while now, but it was closed due to tornado damage and cleanup.  Well, we were so excited to find out it was open now.  There are only 8 camp sites, they cannot be reserved, and they are hike in only.  We left right after school and were the first ones there!  We so thought we would not get a site since it was a holiday weekend and the forecast was so nice, but we did.  We have decided that our little camping site is a secret little gem out there and not many people know about it.  We plan to keep it that way.  We got there and did some hiking to decide which camp site to take, hiked back to our car, hiked back to the site with most of our gear.  We left the kids at the site to look for kindling while we went back for one more load.  We got back to the site, Chuck and the kids got the fire going and then set up the tent while I got the food ready.  After a bit, I cooked the burgers on the grill and then we ate!  After that we went on another hike in the semi-darkness.  Lily scared and we decided to go back.  We sat around the fire and I read some stories and then we had s'mores!  It was at this time that we started to hear the coyotes.  I felt a little freaked out about it, but kept my cool!  We cleaned up and headed to the tent for bedtime.  We were all pretty tired!

In the morning, we got up, started the fire and decided the best thing to eat for an appetizer to breakfast was s'mores and hot cocoa!  We then went on another hike and would have loved to go further, the kids were having a blast, but we had to be at the nature center for Monarch tagging, so we headed back.  We decided to skip breakfast.  We all got changed, cleaned up the camp site, packed up and hiked out.  It was everyone's favorite camping trip and we can't wait to do it again soon.

South Dakota Part 1

The first stop of our summer trip to South Dakota was The Corn Palace. It really was a very neat thing to see! We were caught acting corny!

From there we went to the Badlands National Park. I have been there before, but the beauty of it still amazes me. The kids loved it and were off running and trying to climb huge hills, it was scary! They also collected some very nice rocks from here!

And then, no trip to South Dakota is complete without a stop at Wall Drug! I just love this tourist trap. They have a great place for the kids to play in the back and they loved it!

From there we went on to Custer, more on that in another post!

Vacation

We stopped in Wall Drug, South Dakota on the way to Montana. We were so relieved to be out of the fog that we wanted to celebrate by walking around, and plus, Chuck had never been there. I think that is crazy! The first picture is the ice that formed on the car from driving through the fog. We thought that part was horrible. Little did we know that driving home would be much worse! Probably the worst drive we have ever been on thanks to the fog, black ice, snow, slush and rain! YUCK!

Montana Pictures Part 3

Ok, the first picture is such an adorable, GREEN house. I took the picture because I sooooo want to live in that house, or one like it. The next is a picture of College M" is you look kind of right in the middle of the picture you can see the M on the mountain; that is where we hiked the first day we were there. And, then our coffee cups from a great coffee shop, yummy!

Montana Part 2

Well, the formatting is crazy here, but here we are visiting the Rocky Mountain Museum. The place was awesome, with tons of stuff about dinos, Native Americans, old time living, and Jamestown. We really had a lot of fun!

Montana Pictures Part 1

Here we are on vacation in Bozeman, MT. I enjoyed a delicious beer of some sort at Montana Ale Works, and on a different day we both enjoyed a bison burger at Ted's Montana Grill. We went on a hike to "College M" and Chuck had some fun with that as you can tell!