Vacation!! Part Two

After a night's rest in Rapid City, SD, we headed out for Mount Rushmore. Our first stop was in Keystone, which is a town at the foot of the mountain. It has an "old west", well touristy old west, feel, with good food and plenty of stores to spend your money in...and huge chairs to play around on!






Mount Rushmore...what else can I say? It was quite a sight to see. There is a history center in Keystone that tells all about how the monument was actually built- it's pretty amazing. We made it through the hike down to the base of the mountain, and got back just in time for the rain to start.



After Mt. Rushmore, we went on to the Crazy Horse Memorial. The man who started building this monument actually learned to carve out of mountains from the man who built Mt. Rushmore. The whole project is funded solely by private donations...so it will be interesting to see if the monument will be done in our lifetime. The second picture is what the monument will eventually look like.




The next day, we headed north to North Dakota, to meet two of my aunts, Rita and Marlys, in Medora. We took a tour of the North Dakota Badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I hear that there are almost always lots of buffalo to be seen, but since it was mating season when we were here, there were none! We did see lots of prairie dogs and some wild horses though.


We stopped in at the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame, where my paternal grandfather is an honoree. It was pretty neat to see all of the original cowboys that started their ranches in ND after the Homestead Act. My grandfather had come from Germany, and started working for a big rancher before starting his own ranch.
What do you think? Does cowboy(girl) run in my blood?? (Matt looks good!)


We had a great time with Rita and Marlys in Bismarck, ND. We had lunch at my favorite restaurant...Space Aliens- an oddity that used to only be in Bismarck, but has since expanded to a few other cities in the upper midwest.


We ate some great Ukranian food- recipes passed on to Rita from my paternal grandmother who was full-blooded Ukranian. We had borscht and beet-leaf bread, both were awesome and sooo delicious, and we made sure to take notes so that we could carry on the tradition and pass it on to our kids someday...we'll share the wealth with our friends and family for now! This is the beet leaf bread...yep that's cream on top! Oh, it's heavenly. If anyone can find some beet greens...we'll make this bread and share!


After tons of fun and reminiscing with my aunts in Bismarck, we had to (sadly) start our trip home. We could visit with them for a week and that still wouldn't be long enough! We stopped in Minneapolis on the way home for dinner. We decided to stop at the Mall of America...what a sight...and we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp. It was worth the hike through the mall, and the wait! The food was great and we had a blast.

After dinner, we decided to work off a bit of the calories and play miniature golf...inside the mall. Most of you probably know that there's an amusement park inside the mall. The golf course is on the third floor of the mall, overlooking the amusement park. We had a lot of fun...the course was pretty difficult!

We drove a bit farther, and spent the night in Wisconsin. We finished our drive home the next day. All together, we drove 2500 miles! It was so much fun. We are so grateful to have family to welcome us and to visit along our trip. They spoiled us and we had a great time with them. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can visit again!

We had so much fun on our trip...but it is also very nice to be sleeping in our own bed again!