Our first family vacation

Like I said in my last post, we went to Mt Rushmore over the Memorial Day weekend. It was our first vacation with just the three of us, and we had so much fun. We left on Thursday and drove 5 hours to Alliance, Nebraska. We stayed the night at a crummy hotel there, and we saw Carhenge, and played in the water fountain at central park. One cool thing, is that for about 10 blocks in downtown Alliance, the streets are paved with bricks. We had lots of fun at Carhenge. I don't think I would recommend going out of your way just to see it, but if you are ever near by, you should check it out.
Corbin loved Carhenge. He kept saying, "car! crash!" and he starting crying when it was time to leave.

I loved all the beautiful, green fields

We visited the central park fountain on Friday morning, and then we got back in the car and drove for about 3 hours, until we got to Rapid City, South Dakota. Fifteen miles outside of Rapid City, Clark hit a speed trap and received his first speeding ticket. Definitely a bummer for him. Especially because we had no idea that the speed limit had dropped to 55 mph.

We went to see some dinosaur sculptures. Corbin neighed at the first one he saw. We also went to a cave with a small waterfall in it. Unfortunately, you can't see much in the picture. The waterfall is to the right of Clark and Corbin.
We stopped to see the Stavkirke Chapel, which is a replica of a famous 850 year old Church in Norway. The wood working was amazing.

Saturday we started the day with a tour of Rushmore cave, the closest cave to Mt Rushmore.

Corbin lasted about half of the 60 min. tour in the backpack. Clark carried him the other half.
After the cave, we went on a drive around Custer state park, while Corbin took a nap. We drove through some really need stone tunnels. There were also a couple of really neat wood bridges we drove across. After Corbin woke up, we drove to see Mt Rushmore.

Corbin was getting pretty antsy after Mt Rushmore, and Clark and I were getting tired, so we decided to skip Crazy Horse and instead we went back to Rapid City. We stopped at an amazing kids park called Storybook Island. Corbin rode in his first barrel train, and he loved it. For the next hour he kept talking about the "twain, choo-choo"

Sunday we drove to Badlands National Park. The name comes from early French trappers, who called it bad lands, because it was a difficult area to travel through. Unfortuately, it was a little rainy, but we were still able to drive around and enjoy the park. We just couldn't go on any hikes.

I loved Badlands, It was beautiful!

After driving through badlands, we stopped at Wall Drugstore for lunch, and we wandered around the stores there, and took some fun pictures, like the one below.

We also stopped at an airplane museum, but we didn't take any pictures there.

And that concludes our vacation. We drove back home on Monday, and now life is full of laundry, unpacking, work, and preparing talks for church on Sunday (Yikes! Anyone want to volunteer to do mine for me? I'll prepare it, and you can just read it word for word in front of everyone...any takers???)