Author: Mom

We stopped along the way for the night at a campground and spent the evening bug hunting and pinning our collected critters.
We arrived in St. Louis and stayed at a casio campground. For dinner we went over to have the buffet at the casino. E hate many shrimp, his new food of the month. B downed lots of chicken fingers and then the entire dessert bar. Our main stop was City Museum. We had a blast with a full day outing to our family favorite. We led GrandmaJo and GrandpaHowie all over. Mom braved the dome again. Grandma and Grandpa rode the ferris wheel on top of the 14 story building. We had fun in the spinning chairs. We saw an amazing bug collection! E loved the ropes in the skateless park. We had some fun making snowflakes with The Snowflake Lady. The giant hamster wheel was fun. Grandpa and Grandma were both defeated but didn’t get hurt. We smells smoke and a few minutes later the entire building was evacuated. We stood nervously outside after gathering everyone up. Everything was okay and we were allowed to return back inside. B was a bit frightened but was able to calm down and enjoy the rest of the day. So now we have the long journey home. It will take us two days. E passed the time wearing Dad’s shoes, reading on his kindle and annoying Breighton at every chance.

We got caught in a buffalo jam a few times. This one was by far the worst at almost 30 minutes. Dad’s car doesnt make much noice so the buffalo just weren’t getting out of the way. Cars were able to go around us but we just couldn’t follow them close enough to get out. Mom was near tears afraid of getting trampled! No zoom lens here! UGH! Stopping for a snack? Move along! The burros were hungry and nasty. They tried to get in the windows and use the car as a scratching post. We gave them carrots and E was apparently dangling his fingers like carrots and then closing the window when the burro came around to look. We saw a LOT of pronghorn. Saw some amazing smokeless views. B found a cool beetle and handed it to Mom, still alive! UGH!

A few photos that were left out from the last post of the Buffalo Safari ride. We had a great time!

No trip to Custer State Park is complete without seeing bison. We enjoyed a family safari ride and got to get up close to the buffalo.

CSP is one of our favorite places we have been and we were so excited to revisit this year. We had a nice warm fire a few nights.

We drove the Needles Highway in search of great views of Mount Rushmore. The boys and Laurie did some off trail hiking around the lake. The kids were up on everything they could find to climb on. They certainly love rock scrambling.

Our hiking earned some water and snacks at the lake shop. ON the way back we stopped at the rock shop we visited a few years ago. E got a fox tail and a ton of cool rocks and gems. B picked out some gifts for Grandma Susie and found some neat rocks for his collection as well. We all did the chuckwagon cookout and hayride. We all sang and laughed and had a grand old ti At the cookout we danced the hokey pokey and did the chicken dance. We really enjoyed out time relaxing and exploring in Custer. It seems we always find more to do!

Dad woke us up at some abnormal time in the morning and rolled us out of the motorhome and into his car. We fell asleep immediately and slept most of the long drive from Custer, South Dakota to Harrison, Nebraska to Agate Fossil Beds to see the total solar eclipse.

Agate Fossil was awesome. We had fun passing the time doing Junior, Solar and Archeology Ranger books. There were all sorts of fun crafts like sun paining and solar beads to pass the time. They put on a program about the meaning of the sun in Native American cultures. We laughed, stayed out of the sun and took turns walking around and we waited for the eclipse to start. We were all set with our solar glasses. As the eclipse started we noticed our shadows were fuzzy.

We were able to use the binoculars to shine the sun through onto a towel so we could see the progress without the solar glasses on. During totality it got really dark, the bats came out, crickets chirped and birds went silent. The temperature dropped quite a bit and the wind picked up. It was all so surreal. We will seek totality again in the future for sure! As the light started to come back everything was washed out. Our eyes were having a hard time adjusting. When we looked at the photos later we saw it wasn’t our eyes. The colors in the camera were all weird and muted.

We had an AWESOME time!

We had a one night stop in Billings, Montana on the way to South Dakota. We found out there was a fair in town and headed to check it out. We had a great time learning about all the fun things their 4-H kids do! We enjoyed the old uniforms and all the baking and club displays.

we sampled some fair food: funnel cakes, elephant ears, cheese curds…

B and E each got to pick an oyster to open and got pretty pearls. They bought necklaces to display the pearls. B got a dragon and E picked an eye!